WILD PARKS OF THE WEST 35 



be made into a national park, on account of their 

 supreme grandeur and beauty. Setting out 

 from Flagstaff, a station on the Atchison, To- 

 peka, and Santa Fe Railroad, on the way to the 

 canon you pass through beautiful forests of 

 yellow pine, — like those of the Black Hills, but 

 more extensive, — and curious dwarf forests of 

 nut pine and juniper, the spaces between the 

 miniature trees planted with many interesting 

 species of eriogonum, yucca, and cactus. After 

 riding or walking seventy-five miles through 

 these pleasure-grounds, the San Francisco and 

 other mountains, abounding in flowery parklike 

 openings and smooth shallow valleys with long 

 vistas which in fineness of finish and arrange- 

 ment suggest the work of a consummate land- 

 scape artist, watching you all the way, you come 

 to the most tremendous canon in the world. It 

 is abruptly countersunk in the forest plateau, so 

 that you see nothing of it until you are suddenly 

 stopped on its brink, with its immeasurable 

 wealth of divinely colored and sculptured build- 

 ings before you and beneath you. No matter 

 how far you have wandered hitherto, or how 

 many famous gorges and valleys you have seen, 

 this one, the Grand Canon of the Colorado, will 

 seem as novel to you, as unearthly in the color 

 and grandeur and quantity of its architecture, as 

 if you had found it after death, on some other 

 star ; so incomparably lovely and grand and 



