144 GRAND CANON DISTRICT. 



Whatsoever things he had learned to regard as beautiful and noble he 

 would seldom or never see, and whatsoever he might see would appear 

 to him as anything but beautiful and noble. Whatsoever might be bold 

 and striking would at first seem only grotesque. The colors would be 

 the very ones he had learned to shun as tawdry and bizarre. The 

 tones and shades modest and tender, subdued yet rich, in which his 

 fancy had always taken special delight, would be the ones which arc 

 conspicuously absent. But time would bring a gradual change. Some 

 day he would suddenly become conscious that outlines which at first 

 seemed harsh and trivial have grace and meaning; that forms which 

 seemed grotesque are full of dignity; that magnitudes which had added 

 enormity to coarseness have become replete with strength and even 

 majesty; that colors which had been esteemed unrefined, immodest, 

 and glaring, are as expressive, tender, changeful, and capacious of effects 

 as any others. Great innovations, whether in art or literature, in science 

 or in nature, seldom take the world by storm. They must he under- 

 stood before they can be estimated, and must be cultivated before they 

 can be understood. 



It is so with the Grand Canon. The observer who visits its command- 

 ing points with the expectation of experiencing forthwith a rapturous 

 exaltation, an ecstacy arising from the realization of a degree of grandeur 

 and sublimity never felt before, is doomed to disappointment. Suppos- 

 ing him to be but little familiar with plateau scenery, he will be simply 

 bewildered. Must he therefore pronounce it. a failure, an overpraised 

 thing? Must he entertain a just resentment towards those who may 

 have raised his expectations too high? The answer is that subjects 

 which disclose their full power, meaning, and beauty as soon as they 

 are presented to the mind have very little of those qualities to disclose. 

 Moreover a visitor to the chasm or to any other famous scene must neces- 

 sarily come there (for so is the human mind constituted) with a picture 

 of it created by his own imagination. He reaches the spot, the conjured 

 picture vanishes in an instant, and the place of it must be Idled anew. 

 Surely no imagination can construct out of its. own material any picture 

 having the remotest resemblance to the Grand Canon. In truth the 

 first step in attempting a description is to beg the reader to dismiss 

 from his mind, so far as practicable, any preconceived notion of it. 



Those who have long and carefully studied the Grand Canon of the 

 Colorado do not hesitate for a moment to pron ounce it by far the most sub- 

 lime of all earthly spectacles. If its sublimity consisted only in its 

 dimensions, it could be sufficiently set forth in a single sentence. It is 

 more than 200 miles long, from 5 to 12 miles wide, and from 5,000 to 

 0,000 feet deep. There are in the world valleys which are longer and a 

 few which are deeper. There are valleys flanked by summits loftier 

 than the palisades of the Kaibab. Still the Grand Canon is the sub- 

 limest thing on earth. It is so not alone by virtue of its magnitudes, 

 but by virtue of the whole — its ensemble. 



