40 
The Colorado River 
western corner of Arizona as a '‘mysterious wilderness.” “ He 
forgot that it was thoroughly explored years ago. V/ilderness 
it may be, if that means sparsely settled, but mysterious?—no. 
It is all known and on record. 
The Grand Canyon may be likened to an inverted mountain 
range. Imagine a great mountain chain cast upside down in 
plaster. Then all the former ridges and spurs of the range 
become tributary canyons and gulches running back twenty or 
thirty miles into the surrounding country, growing shallower 
and shallower as the distance increases from the central core, 
just as the great spurs and ridges of a mountain range, descend¬ 
ing, melt finally into the plain. Often there are parts where 
the central gorge is narrow and precipitous, just as a mountain 
range frequently possesses mighty precipices. But it is an 
error to think of great canyons as mere slits in the ground, 
dark and gloomy, like a deep well from whose depths stars 
may be sighted at midday. Minor canyons sometimes ap¬ 
proach this character, as, for example, the canyon of the upper 
Virgen, called Parunuweap, fifteen hundred feet deep and no 
more than twenty to thirty feet wide, with vertical walls, but I 
have never been in a canyon from which stars were visible in 
daylight, nor have I ever known anyone who had. The light 
is about the same as that at the bottom of a narrow street 
flanked by very high buildings. The walls may sometimes be 
gloomy from their colour, or may seem so from the circum¬ 
stances under which one views them, but aside from the fact 
that any deep, shut-in valley or canyon may become oppressive, 
there is nothing specially gloomy about a deep canyon. The 
sun usually falls more or less in every canyon, no matter how 
narrow or deep. It may fall to the very bottom most of the 
day, or only for an hour or two, depending on the trend of 
the canyon with reference to the sun's course. At the bottom 
of the Kanab where it joins the Grand, the sunlight in Novem¬ 
ber remains in the bottom just two hours, but outside in the 
main gorge the time is very much longer. 
The walls of a great canyon, and usually a small one, are ter¬ 
raced ; seldom are they wholly vertical for their entire height, 
^ Ray Stannard Baker, Century Magazine^ May, 1902. 
