210 



THE DESERT 



Color in 



canyon 



shadows. 



The blue sky 

 seen from 

 the canyon 

 depths. 



had doubts about those colored shadows which 

 painters of the plein-air school talked so njuch 

 about a few years ago. You may have thought 

 that it was all talk and no reality ; but now that 

 you are in the canyon, and in a shadow, look 

 about you and see if there is not plenty of color 

 there, too. The walls are dyed with it, the 

 stones are stained with it — all sorts of colors 

 from strata of rock, from clays and slates, from 

 minerals, from lichens, from mosses. The 

 stones under your feet have not turned black 

 or brown because out of the sunlight. If you 

 were on the upper rim of the canyon looking 

 down, the whole body of air in shadow would 

 look blue. And that strange light coming from 

 above ! You may have had doubts, too, about 

 the intense luminosity of the blue sky ; but look 

 up at it along the walls of rock to where it 

 spreads in a thin strip above the jaws of the 

 canyon. Did you ever see such light coming 

 out of the blue before I See how it flashes from 

 the long line of tumbling water that pitches over 

 the rocks ! White as an avalanche, the water 

 slips through the air down to its basin of stone ; 

 and white, again, as the snow are the foam and 

 froth of the pool. 



Stones and water in a gorge, wastes of rock 



