A BIRD-GAZER AT THE CANON 



an extraordinarily pungent and persistent, agree- 

 ably medicinal odor. 



Tiie bird-gazer was noting these details (the 

 last-mentioned bush, especially, being a most 

 interesting one, with which he hoped some time 

 or other to come to a better understanding), and 

 now and then pushing out to the brink of the 

 Canon, every point affording a change of pros- 

 pect, when, to his surprise, he found himself at 

 the end of his jaunt. 



Here, surely, was a grand outlook. He was 

 glad he had come. The Canon was beginning to 

 fasten its hold upon him. Far down (a good part 

 of a mile down) could be seen a stretch of the 

 Colorado River, and now for the first time he 

 heard its voice, the only sound that had yet 

 reached him out of the abyss. 



"The silent Canon," he had caught himself 

 murmuring the day before. Indeed, its silence 

 had impressed him almost as much as its ex- 

 tent, its wealth of color, and its strange architect- 

 ural forms, which last, one may almost say, are 

 what chieily give to the Canon its peculiar char- 

 acter. One gazes upon the huge, symmetrical 

 artificial-looking constructions ("like the visible 

 dream of an architect gone mad "), and thinks 

 of Coleridge's lines — at least our bird-gazer 

 thought of them : — 



215 



