TIME AND CHANGE 



We call it the &quot;Divine Abyss.&quot; It seems as much 

 of heaven as of earth. Of the many descriptions of 

 it, none seems adequate. To rave over it, or to pour 

 into it a torrent of superlatives, is of little avail. My 

 companion came nearer the mark when she quietly 

 repeated from Revelation, &quot;And he carried me away 

 in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and 

 shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem.&quot; It 

 does, indeed, suggest a far-off, half -sacred antiquity, 

 some greater Jerusalem, Egypt, Babylon, or India. 

 We speak of it as a scene: it is more like a vision, 

 so foreign is it to all other terrestrial spectacles, 

 and so surpassingly beautiful. 



To ordinary folk the sight is so extraordinary, 

 so unlike everything one s experience has yielded, 

 and so unlike the results of the usual haphazard 

 working of the blind forces of nature, that I did not 

 wonder when people whom I met on the rim asked 

 me what I supposed did all this. I could even sym 

 pathize with the remark of an old woman visitor 

 who is reported to have said that she thought they 

 had built the canon too near the hotel. The enorm 

 ous cleavage which the canon shows, the abrupt 

 drop from the brink of thousands of feet, the sheer 

 faces of perpendicular walls of dizzy height, give at 

 first the impression that it is all the work of some 

 titanic quarryman, who must have removed cubic 

 miles of strata as we remove cubic yards of earth. 



Go out to Hopi Point or O Neil s Point, and, as 

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