THE CHASM AT THE FOOT OF THE TOEOWEAP. 
91 
conventional notions. But as tliej^ become familiar we find them appealing 
to the sestlietic sense as powerfully as any scenery that ever invited the 
pencil of Claude or of Turner. 
The inner gorge, as we sit upon its brink, is indeed a mighty spectacle; 
but as we withdraw a little it fades out of view, and, strangely enough, 
the sublimity of the scene is not very greatly impaired. It is, after all, a 
mere detail, and the outer chasm is the all-engrossing feature. On either 
side its palisades stretch away to the horizon. Their fronts wander in and 
out, here throwing out a gable, there receding into a chamber, or gaping 
widely to admit the entrance of a lateral chasm. The profile is ever the 
same. It has nothing in common with the formless, chaotic crags, which 
are only big and rough, but is definite, graceful, architectural, and system- 
atic. The width of the space inclosed between the upper walls is one of 
the most essential elements of the grandeur.. It varies from five to six 
miles. If it were narrower the effect would be impaired; nor could it be 
much wider without diluting and weakening the general effect. This pro- 
portion seems quite just. It is a common notion that the distinctive and 
overruling feature of the great chasm is its narrowness relatively to its 
depth. No greater mistake could be made. Our highest conceptions of 
grandeur are most fully realized when we can see the greatest mass. We 
must have amplitude in all of the three dimensions, length, breadth, and 
depth, and that spectacle is in point of magnitude the grandest which has 
the three dimensions so proportioned and combined as to make the most of 
them. Another common and mistaken idea is that the chasm is pervaded 
by a deep, solemn gloom. The truth is almost the reverse. In the depths 
of the inner gorge there is a suggestion of gloom, but even in the narrower 
portions there is seldom less than sixty degrees of sky from crest to crest, 
and a hundred and sixty along the track of the river. In the outer chasm 
the scene is unusually bright. The upper half of the palisades has a pale, 
ashy, or pearl-gray color, which is very lustrous, and this sometimes gives 
place to a creamy or Naples yellow tint in the frieze of cross-bedded sand- 
stone. The lower Aubrey sandstones are bright-red, but they are in great 
part masked by the talus shot down from the pale-gray limestones above, 
and peep out in lustrous spots where the curtain of the talus is drawn aside. 
