THE DIVINE ABYSS 
you emerge from the woods, you get a glimpse of a 
blue or rose-purple gulf opening before you. The 
solid ground ceases suddenly, and an aerial perspec- 
tive, vast and alluring, takes its place; another hea- 
ven, countersunk in the earth, transfixes you on the 
brink. “Great God!” I can fancy the first beholder 
of it saying, “what is this? Do I behold the trans- 
figuration of the earth? Has the solid ground melted 
into thin air? Is there a firmament below as well as 
above? Has the earth veil at last been torn aside, 
and the red heart of the globe been laid bare?” If 
this first witness was not at once overcome by the 
beauty of the earthly revelation before him, or terri- 
fied by its strangeness and power, hemust have stood 
long, awed, spellbound, speechless with astonish- 
ment, and thrilled with delight. He may have seen 
vast and glorious prospects from mountain-tops, he 
may have looked down upon the earth and seen it 
unroll like a map before him; but he had never be- 
fore looked into the earth as through a mighty win- 
dow or open door, and beheld depths and gulfs of 
space, with their atmospheric veils and illusions and 
vast perspectives, such as he had seen from moun- 
tain-summits, but with a wealth of color and a 
suggestion of architectural and monumental re- 
mains, and a strange, almost unearthly beauty, such 
as no mountain-view could ever have afforded him. 
Three features of the cafion strike one at once: its 
unparalleled magnitude, its architectural forms and 
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