Our Italy Part 6

The point where we struck the Grand Canon, approaching it from the south, is opposite the promontory in the Kaibab Plateau named Point Sublime by Major Powell, just north of the 36th parallel, and 112 15'

west longitude. This is only a few miles west of the junction with the Little Colorado. About three or four miles west of this junction the river enters the east slope of the east Kaibab monocline, and here the Grand Canon begins. Rapidly the chasm deepens to about 6000 feet, or rather it penetrates a higher country, the slope of the river remaining about the same. Through this lofty plateau--an elevation of 7000 to 9000 feet--the chasm extends for sixty miles, gradually changing its course to the north-west, and entering the Kanab Plateau. The Kaibab division of the Grand Canon is by far the sublimest of all, being 1000 feet deeper than any other. It is not grander only on account of its greater depth, but it is broader and more diversified with magnificent architectural features.

The Kanab division, only less magnificent than the Kaibab, receives the Kanab Canon from the north and the Cataract Canon from the south, and ends at the Toroweap Valley.

The section of the Grand Canon seen by those who take the route from Peach Springs is between 113 and 114 west longitude, and, though wonderful, presents few of the great features of either the Kaibab or the Kanab divisions. The Grand Canon ends, west longitude 114, at the Great Wash, west of the Hurricane Ledge or Fault. Its whole length from Little Colorado to the Great Wash, measured by the meanderings of the surface of the river, is 220 miles; by a median line between the crests of the summits of the walls with two-mile cords, about 195 miles; the distance in a straight line is 125 miles.

In our journey to the Grand Canon we left the Santa Fe line at Flagstaff, a new town with a lively lumber industry, in the midst of a spruce-pine forest which occupies the broken country through which the road pa.s.ses for over fifty miles. The forest is open, the trees of moderate size are too thickly set with low-growing limbs to make clean lumber, and the foliage furnishes the minimum of shade; but the change to these woods is a welcome one from the treeless reaches of the desert on either side. The canon is also reached from Williams, the next station west, the distance being a little shorter, and the point on the canon visited being usually a little farther west. But the Flagstaff route is for many reasons usually preferred. Flagstaff lies just south-east of the San Francisco Mountain, and on the great Colorado Plateau, which has a pretty uniform elevation of about 7000 feet above the sea. The whole region is full of interest. Some of the most remarkable cliff dwellings are within ten miles of Flagstaff, on the Walnut Creek Canon. At Holbrook, 100 miles east, the traveller finds a road some forty miles long, that leads to the great petrified forest, or Chalcedony Park. Still farther east are the villages of the Pueblo Indians, near the line, while to the northward is the great reservation of the Navajos, a nomadic tribe celebrated for its fine blankets and pretty work in silver--a tribe that preserves much of its manly independence by shunning the charity of the United States. No Indians have come into intimate or dependent relations with the whites without being deteriorated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOURISTS IN THE COLORADO CAnON.]

Flagstaff is the best present point of departure, because it has a small hotel, good supply stores, and a large livery-stable, made necessary by the business of the place and the objects of interest in the neighborhood, and because one reaches from there by the easiest road the finest scenery incomparably on the Colorado. The distance is seventy-six miles through a practically uninhabited country, much of it a desert, and with water very infrequent. No work has been done on the road; it is made simply by driving over it. There are a few miles here and there of fair wheeling, but a good deal of it is intolerably dusty or exceedingly stony, and progress is slow. In the daytime (it was the last of June) the heat is apt to be excessive; but this could be borne, the air is so absolutely dry and delicious, and breezes occasionally spring up, if it were not for the dust. It is, notwithstanding the novelty of the adventure and of the scenery by the way, a tiresome journey of two days.

A day of rest is absolutely required at the canon, so that five days must be allowed for the trip. This will cost the traveller, according to the size of the party made up, from forty to fifty dollars. But a much longer sojourn at the canon is desirable.

Our party of seven was stowed in and on an old Concord coach drawn by six horses, and piled with camp equipage, bedding, and provisions. A four-horse team followed, loaded with other supplies and cooking utensils. The road lies on the east side of the San Francisco Mountain.

Returning, we pa.s.sed around its west side, gaining thus a complete view of this shapely peak. The compact range is a group of extinct volcanoes, the craters of which are distinctly visible. The cup-like summit of the highest is 13,000 feet above the sea, and snow always lies on the north escarpment. Rising about 6000 feet above the point of view of the great plateau, it is from all sides a n.o.ble object, the dark rock, snow-sprinkled, rising out of the dense growth of pine and cedar. We drove at first through open pine forests, through park-like intervals, over the foot-hills of the mountain, through growths of scrub cedar, and out into the ever-varying rolling country to widely-extended prospects.

Two considerable hills on our right attracted us by their unique beauty.

Upon the summit and side of each was a red glow exactly like the tint of sunset. We thought surely that it was the effect of reflected light, but the sky was cloudless and the color remained constant. The color came from the soil. The first was called Sunset Mountain. One of our party named the other, and the more beautiful, Peachblow Mountain, a poetic and perfectly descriptive name.

We lunched at noon beside a swift, clouded, cold stream of snow-water from the San Francisco, along which grew a few gnarled cedars and some brilliant wild flowers. The scene was more than picturesque; in the clear hot air of the desert the distant landscape made a hundred pictures of beauty. Behind us the dark form of San Francisco rose up 6000 feet to its black crater and fields of spotless snow. Away off to the north-east, beyond the brown and gray pastures, across a far line distinct in dull color, lay the Painted Desert, like a mirage, like a really painted landscape, glowing in red and orange and pink, an immense city rather than a landscape, with towers and terraces and facades, melting into indistinctness as in a rosy mist, spectral but constant, weltering in a tropic glow and heat, walls and columns and shafts, the wreck of an Oriental capital on a wide violet plain, suffused with brilliant color softened into exquisite shades. All over this region nature has such surprises, that laugh at our inadequate conception of her resources.

Our camp for the night was at the next place where water could be obtained, a station of the Arizona Cattle Company. Abundant water is piped down to it from mountain springs. The log-house and stable of the cow-boys were unoccupied, and we pitched our tent on a knoll by the corral. The night was absolutely dry, and sparkling with the starlight.

A part of the company spread their blankets on the ground under the sky.

It is apt to be cold in this region towards morning, but lodging in the open air is no hardship in this delicious climate. The next day the way part of the distance, with only a road marked by wagon wheels, was through extensive and barren-looking cattle ranges, through pretty vales of gra.s.s surrounded by stunted cedars, and over stormy ridges and plains of sand and small bowlders. The water having failed at Red Horse, the only place where it is usually found in the day's march, our horses went without, and we had resource to our canteens. The whole country is essentially arid, but snow falls in the winter-time, and its melting, with occasional showers in the summer, create what are called surface wells, made by drainage. Many of them go dry by June. There had been no rain in the region since the last of March, but clouds were gathering daily, and showers are always expected in July. The phenomenon of rain on this baked surface, in this hot air, and with this immense horizon, is very interesting. Showers in this tentative time are local. In our journey we saw showers far off, we experienced a dash for ten minutes, but it was local, covering not more than a mile or two square. We have in sight a vast canopy of blue sky, of forming and dispersing clouds. It is difficult for them to drop their moisture in the rising columns of hot air. The result at times was a very curious spectacle--rain in the sky that did not reach the earth. Perhaps some cold current high above us would condense the moisture, which would begin to fall in long trailing sweeps, blown like fine folds of muslin, or like sheets of dissolving sugar, and then the hot air of the earth would dissipate it, and the showers would be absorbed in the upper regions. The heat was sometimes intense, but at intervals a refreshing wind would blow, the air being as fickle as the rain; and now and then we would see a slender column of dust, a thousand or two feet high, marching across the desert, apparently not more than two feet in diameter, and wavering like the threads of moisture that tried in vain to reach the earth as rain. Of life there was not much to be seen in our desert route. In the first day we encountered no habitation except the ranch-house mentioned, and saw no human being; and the second day none except the solitary occupant of the dried well at Red Horse, and two or three Indians on the hunt. A few squirrels were seen, and a rabbit now and then, and occasionally a bird.

The general impression was that of a deserted land. But antelope abound in the timber regions, and we saw several of these graceful creatures quite near us. Excellent antelope steaks, bought of the wandering Indian hunters, added something to our "canned" supplies. One day as we lunched, without water, on the cedar slope of a lovely gra.s.s interval, we saw coming towards us over the swells of the prairie a figure of a man on a horse. It rode to us straight as the crow flies. The Indian pony stopped not two feet from where our group sat, and the rider, who was an Oualapai chief, clad in sacking, with the print of the brand of flour or salt on his back, dismounted with his Winchester rifle, and stood silently looking at us without a word of salutation. He stood there, impa.s.sive, until we offered him something to eat. Having eaten all we gave him, he opened his mouth and said, "Smoke 'em?" Having procured from the other wagon a pipe of tobacco and a pull at the driver's canteen, he returned to us all smiles. His only baggage was the skull of an antelope, with the horns, hung at his saddle. Into this he put the bread and meat which we gave him, mounted the wretched pony, and without a word rode straight away. At a little distance he halted, dismounted, and motioned towards the edge of the timber, where he had spied an antelope. But the game eluded him, and he mounted again and rode off across the desert--a strange figure. His tribe lives in the canon some fifty miles west, and was at present encamped, for the purpose of hunting, in the pine woods not far from the point we were aiming at.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ON THE BRINK OF THE GRAND CAnON.--THE UNIQUE MARVEL OF NATURE.

The way seemed long. With the heat and dust and slow progress, it was exceedingly wearisome. Our modern nerves are not attuned to the slow crawling of a prairie-wagon. There had been growing for some time in the coach a feeling that the journey did not pay; that, in fact, no mere scenery could compensate for the fatigue of the trip. The imagination did not rise to it. "It will have to be a very big canon," said the d.u.c.h.ess.

Late in the afternoon we entered an open pine forest, pa.s.sed through a meadow where the Indians had set their camp by a shallow pond, and drove along a ridge, in the cool shades, for three or four miles. Suddenly, on the edge of a descent, we who were on the box saw through the tree-tops a vision that stopped the pulse for a second, and filled us with excitement. It was only a glimpse, far off and apparently lifted up--red towers, purple cliffs, wide-spread apart, hints of color and splendor; on the right distance, mansions, gold and white and carmine (so the light made them), architectural habitations in the sky it must be, and suggestions of others far off in the middle distance--a substantial aerial city, or the ruins of one, such as the prophet saw in a vision.

It was only a glimpse. Our hearts were in our mouths. We had a vague impression of something wonderful, fearful--some incomparable splendor that was not earthly. Were we drawing near the "City?" and should we have yet a more perfect view thereof? Was it Jerusalem or some Hindoo temples there in the sky? "It was builded of pearls and precious stones, also the streets were paved with gold; so that by reason of the natural glory of the city, and the reflection of the sunbeams upon it, Christian with desire fell sick." It was a momentary vision of a vast amphitheatre of splendor, mostly hidden by the trees and the edge of the plateau.

We descended into a hollow. There was the well, a log-cabin, a tent or two under the pine-trees. We dismounted with impatient haste. The sun was low in the horizon, and had long withdrawn from this gra.s.sy dell.

Tired as we were, we could not wait. It was only to ascend the little steep, stony slope--300 yards--and we should see! Our party were straggling up the hill: two or three had reached the edge. I looked up.

The d.u.c.h.ess threw up her arms and screamed. We were not fifteen paces behind, but we saw nothing. We took the few steps, and the whole magnificence broke upon us. No one could be prepared for it. The scene is one to strike dumb with awe, or to unstring the nerves; one might stand in silent astonishment, another would burst into tears.

There are some experiences that cannot be repeated--one's first view of Rome, one's first view of Jerusalem. But these emotions are produced by a.s.sociation, by the sudden standing face to face with the scenes most wrought into our whole life and education by tradition and religion.

This was without a.s.sociation, as it was without parallel. It was a shock so novel that the mind, dazed, quite failed to comprehend it. All that we could grasp was a vast confusion of amphitheatres and strange architectural forms resplendent with color. The vastness of the view amazed us quite as much as its transcendent beauty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRAND CAnON OF THE COLORADO--VIEW FROM THE HANSE TRAIL.]

We had expected a canon--two lines of perpendicular walls 6000 feet high, with the ribbon of a river at the bottom; but the reader may dismiss all his notions of a canon, indeed of any sort of mountain or gorge scenery with which he is familiar. We had come into a new world.

What we saw was not a canon, or a chasm, or a gorge, but a vast area which is a break in the plateau. From where we stood it was twelve miles across to the opposite walls--a level line of mesa on the Utah side. We looked up and down for twenty to thirty miles. This great s.p.a.ce is filled with gigantic architectural constructions, with amphitheatres, gorges, precipices, walls of masonry, fortresses terraced up to the level of the eye, temples mountain size, all brilliant with horizontal lines of color--streaks of solid hues a few feet in width, streaks a thousand feet in width--yellows, mingled white and gray, orange, dull red, brown, blue, carmine, green, all blending in the sunlight into one transcendent suffusion of splendor. Afar off we saw the river in two places, a mere thread, as motionless and smooth as a strip of mirror, only we knew it was a turbid, boiling torrent, 6000 feet below us.

Directly opposite the overhanging ledge on which we stood was a mountain, the sloping base of which was ashy gray and bluish; it rose in a series of terraces to a thousand-feet wall of dark red sandstone, receding upward, with ranges of columns and many fantastic sculptures, to a finial row of gigantic opera-gla.s.ses 6000 feet above the river. The great San Francisco Mountain, with its snowy crater, which we had pa.s.sed on the way, might have been set down in the place of this one, and it would have been only one in a mult.i.tude of such forms that met the eye whichever way we looked. Indeed, all the vast mountains in this region might be hidden in this canon.

Wandering a little away from the group and out of sight, and turning suddenly to the scene from another point of view, I experienced for a moment an indescribable terror of nature, a confusion of mind, a fear to be alone in such a presence. With all this grotesqueness and majesty of form and radiance of color, creation seemed in a whirl. With our education in scenery of a totally different kind, I suppose it would need long acquaintance with this to familiarize one with it to the extent of perfect mental comprehension.

The vast abyss has an atmosphere of its own, one always changing and producing new effects, an atmosphere and shadows and tones of its own--golden, rosy, gray, brilliant, and sombre, and playing a thousand fantastic tricks to the vision. The rich and wonderful color effects, says Captain Dutton, "are due to the inherent colors of the rocks, modified by the atmosphere. Like any other great series of strata in the plateau province, the carboniferous has its own range of colors, which might serve to distinguish it, even if we had no other criterion. The summit strata are pale gray, with a faint yellowish cast. Beneath them the cross-bedded sandstone appears, showing a mottled surface of pale pinkish hue. Underneath this member are nearly 1000 feet of the lower Aubrey sandstones, displaying an intensely brilliant red, which is somewhat marked by the talus shot down from the gray cherty limestone at the summit. Beneath the lower Aubrey is the face of the Red Wall limestone, from 2000 to 3000 feet high. It has a strong red tone, but a very peculiar one. Most of the red strata of the West have the brownish or vermilion tones, but these are rather purplish red, as if the pigment had been treated to a dash of blue. It is not quite certain that this may not arise in part from the intervention of the blue haze, and probably it is rendered more conspicuous by this cause; but, on the whole, the purplish cast seems to be inherent. This is the dominant color of the canon, for the expanse of the rock surface displayed is more than half in the Red Wall group."

I was continually likening this to a vast city rather than a landscape, but it was a city of no man's creation nor of any man's conception. In the visions which inspired or crazy painters have had of the New Jerusalem, of Babylon the Great, of a heaven in the atmosphere, with endless perspective of towers and steeps that hang in the twilight sky, the imagination has tried to reach this reality. But here are effects beyond the artist, forms the architect has not hinted at; and yet everything reminds us of man's work. And the explorers have tried by the use of Oriental nomenclature to bring it within our comprehension, the East being the land of the imagination. There is the Hindoo Amphitheatre, the Bright Angel Amphitheatre, the Ottoman Amphitheatre, Shiva's Temple, Vishnu's Temple, Vulcan's Throne. And here, indeed, is the idea of the paG.o.da architecture, of the terrace architecture, of the bizarre constructions which rise with projecting b.u.t.tresses, rows of pillars, recesses, battlements, esplanades, and low walls, hanging gardens, and truncated pinnacles. It is a city, but a city of the imagination. In many pages I could tell what I saw in one day's lounging for a mile or so along the edge of the precipice. The view changed at every step, and was never half an hour the same in one place. Nor did it need much fancy to create illusions or pictures of unearthly beauty.

There was a castle, terraced up with columns, plain enough, and below it a parade-ground; at any moment the knights in armor and with banners might emerge from the red gates and deploy there, while the ladies looked down from the balconies. But there were many castles and fortresses and barracks and n.o.ble mansions. And the rich sculpture in this brilliant color! In time I began to see queer details: a Richardson house, with low portals and round arches, surmounted by a Nuremberg gable; perfect panels, 600 feet high, for the setting of pictures; a train of cars partly derailed at the door of a long, low warehouse, with a garden in front of it. There was no end to such devices.

It was long before I could comprehend the vastness of the view, see the enormous chasms and rents and seams, and the many architectural ranges separated by great gulfs, between me and the wall of the mesa twelve miles distant. Away to the north-east was the blue Navajo Mountain, the lone peak in the horizon; but on the southern side of it lay a desert level, which in the afternoon light took on the exact appearance of a blue lake; its edge this side was a wall thousands of feet high, many miles in length, and straightly horizontal; over this seemed to fall water. I could see the foam of it at the foot of the cliff; and below that was a lake of shimmering silver, in which the giant precipice and the fall and their color were mirrored. Of course there was no silver lake, and the reflection that simulated it was only the sun on the lower part of the immense wall.

Some one said that all that was needed to perfect this scene was a Niagara Falls. I thought what figure a fall 150 feet high and 3000 long would make in this arena. It would need a spy-gla.s.s to discover it. An adequate Niagara here should be at least three miles in breadth, and fall 2000 feet over one of these walls. And the Yosemite--ah! the lovely Yosemite! Dumped down into this wilderness of gorges and mountains, it would take a guide who knew of its existence a long time to find it.

The process of creation is here laid bare through the geologic periods.

The strata of rock, deposited or upheaved, preserve their horizontal and parallel courses. If we imagine a river flowing on a plain, it would wear for itself a deeper and deeper channel. The walls of this channel would recede irregularly by weathering and by the coming in of other streams. The channel would go on deepening, and the outer walls would again recede. If the rocks were of different material and degrees of hardness, the forms would be carved in the fantastic and architectural manner we find them here. The Colorado flows through the tortuous inner chasm, and where we see it, it is 6000 feet below the surface where we stand, and below the towers of the terraced forms nearer it. The splendid views of the canon at this point given in Captain Dutton's report are from Point Sublime, on the north side. There seems to have been no way of reaching the river from that point. From the south side the descent, though wearisome, is feasible. It reverses mountaineering to descend 6000 feet for a view, and there is a certain pleasure in standing on a mountain summit without the trouble of climbing it. Hance, the guide, who has charge of the well, has made a path to the bottom.

The route is seven miles long. Half-way down he has a house by a spring.

At the bottom, somewhere in those depths, is a sort of farm, gra.s.s capable of sustaining horses and cattle, and ground where fruit-trees can grow. Horses are actually living there, and parties descend there with tents, and camp for days at a time. It is a world of its own. Some of the photographic views presented here, all inadequate, are taken from points on Hance's trail. But no camera or pen can convey an adequate conception of what Captain Dutton happily calls a great innovation in the modern ideas of scenery. To the eye educated to any other, it may be shocking, grotesque, incomprehensible; but "those who have long and carefully studied the Grand Canon of the Colorado do not hesitate for a moment to p.r.o.nounce it by far the most sublime of all earthly spectacles."

I have s.p.a.ce only to refer to the geologic history in Captain Dutton's report of 1882, of which there should be a popular edition. The waters of the Atlantic once overflowed this region, and were separated from the Pacific, if at all, only by a ridge. The story is of long eras of deposits, of removal, of upheaval, and of volcanic action. It is estimated that in one period the thickness of strata removed and transported away was 10,000 feet. Long after the Colorado began its work of corrosion there was a mighty upheaval. The reader will find the story of the making of the Grand Canon more fascinating than any romance.

Without knowing this story the impression that one has in looking on this scene is that of immense antiquity, hardly anywhere else on earth so overwhelming as here. It has been here in all its lonely grandeur and transcendent beauty, exactly as it is, for what to us is an eternity, unknown, unseen by human eye. To the recent Indian, who roved along its brink or descended to its recesses, it was not strange, because he had known no other than the plateau scenery. It is only within a quarter of a century that the Grand Canon has been known to the civilized world. It is scarcely known now. It is a world largely unexplored. Those who best know it are most sensitive to its awe and splendor. It is never twice the same, for, as I said, it has an atmosphere of its own. I was told by Hance that he once saw a thunder-storm in it. He described the chaos of clouds in the pit, the roar of the tempest, the reverberations of thunder, the inconceivable splendor of the rainbows mingled with the colors of the towers and terraces. It was as if the world were breaking up. He fled away to his hut in terror.

The day is near when this scenery must be made accessible. A railway can easily be built from Flagstaff. The projected road from Utah, crossing the Colorado at Lee's Ferry, would come within twenty miles of the Grand Canon, and a branch to it could be built. The region is arid, and in the "sight-seeing" part of the year the few surface wells and springs are likely to go dry. The greatest difficulty would be in procuring water for railway service or for such houses of entertainment as are necessary. It could, no doubt, be piped from the San Francisco Mountain.

At any rate, ingenuity will overcome the difficulties, and travellers from the wide world will flock thither, for there is revealed the long-kept secret, the unique achievement of nature.

APPENDIX.

A CLIMATE FOR INVALIDS.

The following notes on the climate of Southern California, written by Dr. H. A. Johnson, of Chicago, at the solicitation of the writer of this volume and for his information, I print with his permission, because the testimony of a physician who has made a special study of climatology in Europe and America, and is a recognized authority, belongs of right to the public:

The choice of a climate for invalids or semi-invalids involves the consideration of: First, the invalid, his physical condition (that is, disease), his peculiarities (mental and emotional), his social habits, and his natural and artificial needs. Second, the elements of climate, such as temperature, moisture, direction and force of winds, the averages of the elements, the extremes of variation, and the rapidity of change.

The climates of the western and south-western portions of the United States are well suited to a variety of morbid conditions, especially those pertaining to the pulmonary organs and the nervous system. Very few localities, however, are equally well adapted to diseases of innervation of circulation and respiration. For the first and second, as a rule, high alt.i.tudes are not advisable; for the third, alt.i.tudes of from two thousand to six thousand feet are not only admissible but by many thought to be desirable. It seems, however, probable that it is to the dryness of the air and the general antagonisms to vegetable growths, rather than to alt.i.tude alone, that the benefits derived in these regions by persons suffering from consumption and kindred diseases should be credited.

Proximity to large bodies of water, river valleys, and damp plateaus are undesirable as places of residence for invalids with lung troubles. There are exceptions to this rule.

Localities near the sea with a climate subject to slight variations in temperature, a dry atmosphere, little rainfall, much sunshine, not so cold in winter as to prevent much out-door life and not so hot in summer as to make out-door exercise exhausting, are well adapted not only to troubles of the nervous and circulatory systems, but also to those of the respiratory organs.

Such a climate is found in the extreme southern portions of California. At San Diego the rainfall is much less, the air is drier, and the number of sunshiny days very much larger than on our Atlantic seaboard, or in Central and Northern California.

The winters are not cold; flowers bloom in the open air all the year round; the summers are not hot. The mountains and sea combine to give to this region a climate with few sudden changes, and with a comfortable range of all essential elements.

A residence during a part of the winter of 1889-90 at Coronado Beach, and a somewhat careful study of the comparative climatology of the south-western portions of the United States, leads me to think that we have few localities where the comforts of life can be secured, and which at the same time are so well adapted to the needs of a variety of invalids, as San Diego and its surroundings. In saying this I do not wish to be understood as preferring it to all others for some one condition or disease, but only that for weak hearts, disabled lungs, and worn-out nerves it seems to me to be unsurpa.s.sed.

CHICAGO, _July 12, 1890_.