The Grand Cañon of the Colorado

THE sun-browned miner who sat opposite me in the dusty stage talked of our goal to shorten the long hours of the journey, and of the travelers who had preceded us over that lonely trail to the edge of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado River. “Yes, I have been in and out of the cañon for twenty years,” he said, “and I have n’t begun to understand it yet. The Lord knows, perhaps, why he gave it to us ; I never felt big enough to ask.” And he toll the story of a young English preacher whom he once picked up near the end of the road ; who, too poor to pay stage fares, was walking to the cañon; who, after two days and nights in the thirsty wastes, his canteen empty and only a few biscuits left in his pouch, was trudging bravely on, with blistered feet and aching body, because he “ must see ” the mighty miracle beyond.

We were out in the open endless desert, the sunburned desolate waste. Our four horses kicked up the dust of the road, and the wind whirled it into our faces and sifted it through our clothes. We had passed the halfway house, where, finding the shanty too hot, we had unpacked and eaten our luncheons out in the sun and wind. It was just at the weary moment of the long, hot drive when the starting place seemed lost in the past, and the goal still far ahead ; but the thought of the preacher’s ardor made us ashamed to be tired, gave us back the beauty of the day. All the morning we had driven through forests of tall pines and bare white aspens, watching the changing curves of San Francisco Mountain, whose lofty head rose streaked with white against the blue ; until at last, as we rounded its foothills, the desert lay below us like a sea, and we descended to the magic shore and took passage over the billows of silver and amethyst that foamed and waved beyond and afar. Lines of opalescent light grew into rocky mesas rising steep and formidable out of the barren plain. Silvery vistas widened into deserts so barren that even sagebrush and dwarfish cactus choked there ; and the only signs of life, paradoxically, were the chalk - white skeletons of animals that lay collapsing into dust beside the road. All day long we were alone with the world’s immensity, — no human face or voice breaking the wastes of forest and plain, except when our tired horses thrice gave way to fresh ones, and their keepers came out from little shacks to unbuckle the harness and hear the news.

The immense and endless desolation seemed to efface us from the earth. What right had we there, on those lofty lands which never since the beginning of time had offered sustenance to man ? Since first the vast plain with its mighty weight of mountains arose far out of the waters, no kindly rill or fountain had broken the silence and invited life. What hidden wells would feed the prairie dogs, what rains would slake the large thirst of the pines, while now for months the aching land must parch and burn under a cloudless sky ? It was May, and yet the summer had begun in these high places of the earth, and the last flecks of snow were fading from the peaks. Following slowly the gentle grades of the road, we tried to appreciate the altitude. Was it possible that these long levels lay a mile and a half above the ocean ; that this barren slope, where the wind blew keen, was only a thousand feet nearer earth than the crest of the Dent du Midi, whose notched and snowy peak dominates Lac Léman ? No wonder the waters leave the great plateau to the sun, and hurl themselves against mountainous barriers, and carve out gorges and cañons in their wild eagerness to find the sea !

At last we reach the third relay station, and take on six horses instead of four, for the final pull uphill. We alight, and run up and down the shaggy little slope, and free our bodies from the long strain. We reflect that as we are traveling now, even in this primitive slavery to beasts of burden, so for many centuries our fathers had traversed the earth, knowing no swifter way. All day for seventy-five miles, — what a tyrannous abuse of time ! And yet through ages and ages the lords of the earth had been so deaf to its voices that not one secret of nature’s power had escaped to help them conquer her. We had left the nineteenth century behind ; we were exploring the wilderness with the pioneers. We were unaware of the road, of the goal; we were pushing out into the unknown, buffeted by its denials, threatened by its wars, lured by its mysteries. The desert lay behind us now ; once more the quiet forest for miles on miles. So still and sweet and sylvan were its smooth brown slopes ; the tallest pines whose vision overtopped their neighbors were all unsuspicious of nature’s appalling and magnificent intention. And we, we could not believe that the forest would not go on forever, even when vistas of purple began to open through the trees, even when the log-cabin hotel welcomed us to our goal.

It was like sudden death, — our passing round the corner to the other side of that primitive inn; for in a moment we stood at the end of the world, at the brink of the kingdoms of peace and pain. The gorgeous purples of sunset fell into darkness and rose into light over mansions colossal beyond the needs of our puny unwinged race. Terrific abysses yawned and darkened; magical heights glowed with iridescent fire. The earth lay stricken to the heart, her masks and draperies torn away, confessing her eternal passion to the absolving sun. And even as we watched and hearkened, the pitiful night lent deep shadows to cover her majesty and hide its awful secrets from the curious stars.

In the morning, when I went out to verify the vision, to compass earth’s revelation of her soul, the sun fell to the very heart of the mystery, even from the depths rose a thrill of joy. It was morning ; I had slept and eaten ; the fatigue and dust of the long journey no longer oppressed me ; my courage rose to meet the greatness of the world. The benevolent landlady told of a trail which led to Point Lookout, a mile and a half away, beneath whose cliffs the old deserted inn lay in a hollow. I set out with two companions of the stage, who were armed with cameras and possessed of modern ideas. They pleaded for improvements : built a railroad from Flagstaff to the rim, a summer hotel on one of those frowning cliffs ; yes, even a funicular railway down to the hidden river, and pumping works which should entice its waters up the steep slope to the thirsty beasts and travelers whose drink must now be hauled from the halfway house, forty miles away. But I rose up and defended the wilderness ; rejoiced in the dusty stage ride, in the rough cabin that rose so fitly from the clearing, in the vast unviolated solitudes, — in all these proofs that one of the glories of earth was still undesecrated by the chatter of facile tourists ; that here we must still propitiate nature with sacrifices, pay her with toil, prove the temper of our souls before assailing her immensities. And when my companions accused me of selfishness, opened the hidden wonder to all the world, and made it the common property of literature and art, the theme of all men’s praise, even like Mont Blanc and the Colosseum and Niagara, my tongue had no words of defense to utter, but my heart rejoiced the more that I had arrived before all these.

We wandered along the quietest sylvan path, which led us up and down little ravines and dales, always under the shade of tall pines, always over the brown carpet of their needles. Now and then a sudden chasm would lift a corner of the veil, and we would wonder how we dared go on. Yet on and on we went, — a mile and a half, two miles, three, — and still no deserted cabin under slanting cliffs. My companions recalled the landlady’s words, were sure that we had missed the road, and resolved to go back and find it ; so I urged them to the search, and promised to rest and follow. But when I had rested the trail allured me ; surely it was too clear to lead me wrong. I would explore it yet a little. I walked on, — five minutes, ten, — and there below me lay the hollow and the cabin. I passed it, the little silent lodge, with rough-hewn seats under the broad eaves of its porch, its doors hospitably unlatched, its rooms still rudely furnished ; but all dusty, voiceless, forsaken. I climbed the steep slope to the rocks, crawled half prostrate to the barest and highest, and lay there on the edge of the void, the only living thing in some unvisited world.

For surely it was not our world, this stupendous, adorable vision. Not for human needs was it fashioned, but for the abode of gods. It made a coward of me ; I shrank and shut my eyes, and felt crushed and beaten under the intolerable burden of the flesh. For humanity intruded here ; in these warm and glowing purple spaces disembodied spirits must range and soar, souls purged and purified and infinitely daring. I felt keenly sure of mighty presences among the edifices vast in scope and perfect in design that rose from the first foundations of the earth to the lofty level of my jagged rock. Prophets and poets had wandered here before they were born to tell their mighty tales, — Isaiah and Æschy1us and Dante, the giants who dared the utmost. Here at last the souls of great architects must find their dreams fulfilled ; must recognize the primal inspiration which, after long ages, had achieved Assyrian palaces, the temples and pyramids of Egypt, the fortresses and towered cathedrals of mediæval Europe. For the inscrutable Prince of builders had reared these imperishable monuments, evenly terraced upward from the remote abyss; had so cunningly planned them that mortal foot could never climb and enter, to disturb the everlasting hush. Of all richest elements they were fashioned, — jasper and chalcedony, topaz, beryl, and amethyst, firehearted opal and pearl; for they caught and held the most delicate colors of a dream, and flashed full recognition to the sun. Never on earth could such glory be unveiled, — not on level spaces of sea, not on the cold bare peaks of mountains. This was not earth ; for was not heaven itself across there, rising above yonder alabaster marge in opalescent ranks for the principalities and powers ? This was not earth, — I intruded here. Everywhere the proof of my unfitness abased and dazed my will: this vast unviolated silence, as void of life and death as some newborn world ; this mystery of omnipotence revealed, laid bare, but incomprehensible to my weak imagining ; this inaccessible remoteness of depths and heights, from the sinuous river which showed afar one or two tawny crescents curving out of impenetrable shadows, to the mighty temple of Vishnu which gilded its vast tower loftily in the sun. Not for me, not for human souls, not for any form of earthly life, was the secret of this unveiling. Who that breathed could compass it ?

The strain of existence became too tense against these infinities of beauty and terror. My narrow ledge of rock was a prison. I fought against the desperate temptation to fling myself down into that soft abyss, and thus redeem the affront which the eager beating of my heart offered to its inviolable solitude. Death itself would not be too rash an apology for my invasion, — death in those happy spaces, pillowed on purple immensities of air. So keen was the impulse, so slight at that moment became the fleshly tie, that I might almost have yielded but for a sudden word in my ear, — the trill of an oriole from the pine close above me. The brave little song was a message personal and intimate, a miracle of sympathy or prophecy. And I cast myself on that tiny speck of life as on the heart of a friend, — a friend who would save me from intolerable loneliness, from utter extinction and despair. He seemed to welcome me to the infinite ; to bid me go forth and range therein, and know the lords of heaven and earth who there had drunk the deep waters and taken the measure of their souls. I made him the confidant of my unworthiness ; asked him for the secret, since, being winged, he was at home even here. He gave me healing and solace ; restored me to the gentle amenities of our little world ; enabled me to retreat through the woods, as I came, instead of taking the swift dramatic road to liberty.

I do not know how one could live long on the rim of that abyss of glory, on the brink of sensations too violent for the heart of man. I looked with wonder at the guides and innkeepers, the miners and carriers, for whom the utmost magnificence of earth is the mere background of daily living. Does it crush or inspire ? Do they cease to feel it, or does it become so close a need that all earth’s fields and brooks and hills are afterward a petty prison for hearts heavy with longing ? When they go down to the black Inferno where that awful river still cuts its way through the first primeval shapeless rocks, where the midday darkness reveals night’s stars in a cleft of sky, while the brown torrent roars and laughs at its frowning walls, — when they, mere men of the upper air, descend to that nether world, do they recognize the spirits of darkness who shout and strain and labor there ? And when they emerge, and step by step ascend the shining cliffs, do they feel like Dante when he was led by his celestial love to paradise ?

The Days of my wanderings along the edge of the chasm were too few to reconcile my littleness with its immensity. To the end it effaced me. I found comfort in the forests, whose gentle and comprehensible beauty restored me to our human life. It was only the high priest who could enter the Holy of Holies, and he only once a year ; so here, in nature’s innermost sanctuary, man must be of the elect, must purify his soul with fasting and prayer and clothe it in fine raiment, if he would worthily tread the sacred ground. It is not for nothing that the secret is hidden in the wilderness, and that the innermost depths of it are inaccessible to our wingless race. At this point one or two breakneck trails lead down to the Styx-like river, but he who descends to the dark waters must return by the same road ; he may not follow the torrent through the bowels of the earth except to be its sport or prey. Even though he embarks upon that fearsome journey, and even though, like Major Powell and his handful of adventurers, he escapes death by a thousand miracles, yet he may not emerge from the depths of hell through all the days and nights of the journey ; he may not set foot on the purple slopes and climb to the pearly mansions, — nay, nor even behold them, overshadowed as he is by frowning walls that seem to cut the sky. For a few miles along the rim and down a trail or two to the abyss, human feet and human eyes may risk body and soul for an exceeding great reward; but for an hundred miles beyond, both to right and left, the mystery is still inviolate. He who attempts it dies of thirst in the desert, or of violence in the chasm.

Tragic stories are told of men who have lost their lives in the search for precious metals which may lie hidden or uncovered here. The great primeval flood cut its broad V through all the strata of rock, with all their veins of metallic ore, down to the earliest shapeless mass, leaving in its wake the terraced temples and towers which seem to have been planned by some architect of divinest genius to guard their treasures inviolate till the end of time. And the river, rising far to the north among mountains rich in mineral, has been washing away the sand for ages, and depositing its gold and silver and lead in the still crevices of the impenetrable chasm. Here the earth laughs at her human master, and bids him find her wealth if he dare, and bear it away if he can. A young Californian who accepted the challenge, and set forth upon the turgid water to sift its sands for gold, never emerged with his hapless men to tell the story of his search. Only near the brink of the cleft are a few miners burrowing for copper, and sending their ore up to the rim on the backs of hardy burros ; as who should prick the mountain with a pin, or measure the ocean with a cup.

As I grew familiar with the vision, I could not quite explain its stupendous quality. From mountain tops one looks across greater distances, and sees range after range lifting snowy peaks into the blue. The ocean reaches out into boundless space, and the ebb and flow of its waters have the beauty of rhythmic motion and exquisitely varied color. And in the rush of mighty cataracts are power and splendor and majestic peace. Yet for grandeur appalling and unearthly, for ineffable, impossible beauty, the cañon transcends all these. It is as though to the glory of nature were added the glory of art; as though, to achieve her utmost, the proud young world had commanded architecture to build for her and color to grace the building. The irregular masses of mountains, cast up out of the molten earth in some primeval war of elements, bear no relation to these prodigious symmetrical edifices, mounted on abysmal terraces and grouped into spacious harmonies which give form to one’s dreams of heaven. The sweetness of green does not last forever, but these mightily varied purples are eternal. All that grows and moves must perish, while these silent immensities endure. Lovely and majestic beyond the canning of human thought, the mighty monuments rise to the sun as lightly as clouds that pass. And forever glorious and forever immutable, they must rebuke man’s pride with the vision of ultimate beauty, and fulfill earth’s dream of rest after her work is done.

Harriet Monroe.