e fresh hues to those that nature had
already laid there. Once I saw the dawn break over a lake in Rajputana
and the sun set over the Oodey Sagar amid a circle of Holman Hunt hills.
This time I was watching both performances going on below me--upside
down you understand--and the colours were real! The canyon was burning
like Troy town; but it would burn for ever, and, thank goodness, neither
pen nor brush could ever portray its splendours adequately. The Academy
would reject the picture for a chromolithograph. The public would scoff
at the letter-press for _Daily Telegraphese_. "I will leave this thing
alone," said I; "'tis my peculiar property. Nobody else shall share it
with me." Evening crept through the pines that shadowed us, but the full
glory of the day flamed in that canyon as we went out very cautiously to
a jutting piece of rock--blood-red or pink it was--that overhung the
deepest deeps of all. Now I know what it is to sit enthroned amid the
clouds of sunset. Giddiness took away all sensation of touch or form;
but the sense of blinding colour remained. When I reached the mainland
again I had sworn that I had been floating. The maid from New Hampshire
said no word for a very long time. She then quoted poetry, which was
perhaps the best thing she could have done.

"And to think that this show-place has been going on all these days an'
none of we ever saw it," said the old lady from Chicago, with an acid
glance at her husband.

"No, only the Injuns," said he, unmoved; and the maiden and I laughed
long. Inspiration is fleeting, beauty is vain, and the power of the mind
for wonder limited. Though the shining hosts themselves had risen
choiring from the bottom of the gorge they would not have prevented her
papa and one baser than himself from rolling stones down those
stupendous rainbow-washed slides. Seventeen hundred feet of steepest
pitch and rather more than seventeen hundred colours for log or boulder
to whirl through! So we heaved things and saw them gather way and bound
from white rock to red or yellow, dragging behind them torrents of
colour, till the noise of their descent ceased and they bounded a
hundred yards clear at the last into the Yellowstone.

"I've been down there," said Tom that evening. "It's easy to get down if
you're careful--just sit and slide; but getting up is worse. An' I
found, down below there, two rocks just marked with a picture of the
canyon. I wouldn't sell those rocks not for fift