THE DIVINE ABYSS 



its labyrinthian channel so far below us. It is worth 

 while to make the descent in order to look upon the 

 river which has been the chief quarryman in ex 

 cavating the canon, and to find how inadequate it 

 looks for the work ascribed to it. Viewed from where 

 we sat, I judged it to be forty or fifty feet broad, but 

 I was assured that it was between two and three 

 hundred feet. Water and sand are ever symbols 

 of instability and inconstancy, but let them work 

 together, and they saw through mountains, and 

 undermine the foundations of the hills. 



It is always worth while to sit or kneel at the feet 

 of grandeur, to look up into the placid faces of the 

 earth gods and feel their power, and the tourist 

 who goes down into the canon certainly has this 

 privilege. We did not bring back in our hands, or in 

 our hats, the glory that had lured us from the top, 

 but we seemed to have been nearer its sources, and 

 to have brought back a deepened sense of the mag 

 nitude of the forms, and of the depth of the chasm 

 which we had heretofore gazed upon from a distance. 

 Also we had plucked the flower of safety from the 

 nettle danger, always an exhilarating enterprise. 



In climbing back, my eye, now sharpened by my 

 geologic reading, dwelt frequently and long upon 

 the horizon where that cross-bedded Carboniferous 

 sandstone joins the Carboniferous limestone above 

 it. How much older the sandstone looked ! I could 

 not avoid the impression that its surface must have 

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