GRAND CANYON SECTION 
409 
EDITORIAL 
Grand Canyon’s Palacial Section 
The geological section of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado 
River is especially notable because of the fact that it is the only 
earth wall where a mile of strata may be intelligently studied 
without leaving hotel steps. It is on account of this very circum¬ 
stance, it almost seems, that the many other and better sections 
are so invariably shunned. But the stupendous rock prospect 
viewed from the sumptuous El Tovar is by no means supreme. 
The geology of Arizona is not revealed by the El Tovar section 
alone. This section is far from being the key-note to the strati¬ 
graphy over a distance as far as that from New York to Chicago. 
Its exclusive contemplation unfortunately retards by half a cen¬ 
tury rather than advances our knowledge of the rocks. El Tovar 
geology is, indeed, the most sumptuous field experience in all the 
world. 
Overpowering grandeur of the riotous scenery which hovers as 
a luminous halo over this Titan of chasms, does not carry with it, 
as it is widely disposed to assume, an equal sensation of immensity 
concerning the lofty pile of layered rock which canyon wall re¬ 
veals. Yet every earth-student who visits this great cleft in the 
rocks seems impelled to say something or other relative to a cer¬ 
tain supreme magnificance of the geological succession of forma¬ 
tions, implication being, of course, that comparable with the un¬ 
matched landscape this section of the globe’s crust is also the 
grandest and most complete known. From the early visits of 
Newberry and Marcou, in the middle of the last century, when 
the rock sequence was first pictured forth, to the present day, 
this mile-high span of rock layers is made commensurate with the 
scenic sublimity about. Such inference is not by any means a 
necessary consequence. 
