Earth 

 sculpture 



Hair- 

 breadth 

 escapes of 

 John 

 Hance 



The Days of a Man 



1898 



That the river did all this alone and unaided, 

 neither ice nor frost, neither earthquake nor moun- 

 tain-folding having left its mark on the canyon, is 

 at once evident to the geologist. Ice would have 

 made a lake of it; frosts would have sloped back 

 its cliffs; earthquakes would have crumbled its 

 walls; and mountain-making would have uptilted 

 its strata. In the simplest, easiest, and laziest 

 fashion rocks were deposited in the first place in 

 the simplest, easiest, and laziest fashion they have 

 been washed away again; and a view from the rim 

 almost anywhere shows at a glance how it was done. 

 Away from the canyon, however, through western 

 Arizona monstrous lava intrusions, covering hun- 

 dreds of square miles and even rising into high 

 mountains, are scattered here and there, the most 

 important being the San Francisco Peaks. 



The remarkable old winding trail down which we 

 made our way to the turbulent river (a stiff trip, 

 especially on the return) was the work of the noted 

 guide, John Hance, a native of East Tennessee. 

 Hance was a humorist of rare degree. From the 

 brink of the abyss he used touchingly to show the 

 whitened skeleton of a horse a mile below, and tell 

 a marvelous tale. Riding one day along the Rim, 

 he was attacked and surrounded by Navajo Indians, 

 who barred every ordinary way of escape. Spurring 

 on his horse, therefore, he took a hazardous leap 

 into the Canyon. Near the bottom, however, he 

 had the presence of mind to slip to the ground, suf- 

 fering some bruises, of course, but saving his life, 

 though at the cost of a faithful animal. 



On another occasion (so he said) he was down by 

 the river, angling for the Squawfish of the Colorado 

 C 624 n 



