Dec. 13 . 1913- 
FOREST AND STREAM 
759 
A First Impression of the Canyon 
By PAUL BRANDRETH 
T HE most strenuous effort of imagination, 
the wildest flight of fancy fail utterly 
in their attempt to prepare one, even in 
a small way, for a first view of the Grand Can¬ 
yon. However beautiful your dream, however 
great your conception, a single glimpse of the 
thing itself is sufficient to banish all preconceived 
ideas from the min'd. Nor can any description 
that has ever been written, nor any picture that 
has ever been painted anticipate the soul-piercing 
shock of that stupendous reality. 
In a delightful paper, published not so long- 
ago in one of the current issues, John Burroughs 
refers to the Grand Canyon as “the red heart of 
the earth.” » 
It would be hard to choose a more signifi¬ 
cant or suggestive comparison. This mighty gash 
in the crust of the universe, razed out by ages 
of erotion, moulded by time, and people with 
fantastic and fabulously colored shapes, this Cy¬ 
clopean work of nature, plunged in fathomless 
mystery, and wrought in wonderful design, ap¬ 
pears indeed a great organ of the world laid bare. 
Deep down in the granite gorge flows the artery 
of the Colorado River; near and far loom the 
noble configurations, pinnacles and buttes carved 
by the turbid flood in the flesh and tissue of the 
living soil. 
A sense of eternal repose and profound 
solidity lives apparently in those monumental 
figures of sandstone, limestone, and Algonkian 
strata; in the infinite blue distances, vast uncer¬ 
tain depths. Here the elemental agencies of time 
and space appear to have come at last to rest and 
complete fulfillment. Yet even as you look, the 
unseen hand of change is silently working. 
Grain by grain, handful by handful, the old 
process of shifting and rebuilding goes forward. 
Wind and air, sun and water, toil unwearyingly 
in carrying on the labor of reconstruction. Every¬ 
thing is moving, rising, falling, buckling, crum¬ 
bling and wearing away. And so one begins to 
realize that the atmosphere of solidity which 
haloes each red-glowing butte, is after all fugi¬ 
tive and transient; the impression of permanency 
but a gentle delusion. As a matter of fact the 
forces of erosion are today as potently active as 
in the primal twilight of mud and slime. 
It is thirteen miles as the crow flies from 
El Tovar on the eastern rim of the Canyon 
across to the Kaibab plateau. Yet, to even the 
casual observer the distance appears twice as 
great. The dim blue and ochre colored palisades 
seem to lie upon the utmost verge of the horizon; 
the pine and black birch trees growing on the 
plateau look like mere pin points of grass. Be¬ 
tween you and that remote boundary line float 
impalpable tints of purple and azalea. Vapor¬ 
ous scarfs drift and glisten over the vast crevice 
split open in the earth at your feet. Indigo 
pools of shadow and sudden bursts of dazzling- 
sunlight that cast the farthest buttes into sharp 
relief, confuse to the point of bewilderment your 
judgment as to distances. One mile appears the 
equivalent of three or four. And indeed, the 
atmospheric conditions are so variable and so 
misleading that nine times out of ten your calcu¬ 
lations will be at fault. 
On a still, clarified day the lineaments of 
canyon, river-gorge and stratified wall loom near 
and distinct. Details stand boldly forth and 
things before unnoticed are intimately revealed. 
But always is the Canyon most beautiful when 
its distances appear the greatest, when sun and 
shadow, and vapor, and must dispose over all an 
air of brooding aloofness and profound solitude. 
To be realized at its best this effect should 
be looked for just before and just after the set¬ 
ting of the sun. The west is sunk in a 
trough of blazing gold; the sky above flecked 
with little fiery cloudlets. Near and far the great 
buttes and mountains of sandstone, like sleeping- 
monsters lie immersed in swimming gulfs of 
blue and purple shadow. A distant temple peak 
glows and wanes, and glows again with incan¬ 
descent radiance; and from the fluted barrier 
that breaks in divers colors against the horizon; 
from the remote and perfumed forests that 
clothe the plateau; from immeasurable vistas and 
gleaming sandstone minarets, the mystery of in¬ 
finite distance calls, and calls, and calls you yet 
again. Then as though at the bidding of a voice 
you look down. 
Impossible of description are your sensations 
on first beholding that sublime vision. For an 
instant or two your breath is literally taken 
away. Were you a Moslem, a Hindoo or a Bud- 
dist, you would doubtlessly fall upon your face 
and worship at this shrine of all the godheads. 
As i’t is you are filled with many strange emo¬ 
tions. The depth, the magnitude, the enormous 
scale on which everything is moulded and ar¬ 
ranged is almost stupifying. You feel dizzy. 
Some people of highly nervous organization are 
possessed of a mad desire to plunge headlong- 
over the abyss. The tremendous drop of four 
thousand, four hundred and thirty feet down to 
the river bottom lures them with a terrible fas¬ 
cination. As a matter of fact it takes even the 
most stolid and collected mentality some little 
time to grow accustomed to the immensity of the 
thing revealed. Until details become segregated 
in your mind you feel confused, overwhelmed. 
For a while at least the wonder of the spectacle 
seems quite beyond the power of human compre¬ 
hension. 
Presently, however, as the weird cataclysmic 
shapes are individually established on your plain 
of vision ; as you grow more familiar with the awe¬ 
inspiring depth that yawns downward with such 
terrifying abruptness from the Canyon’s rim, 
presently you become conscious, and always more 
so, of the eternal order of the things revealed. 
It is now, moreover, after the primary thrill and 
shock is passed, that the full wonder of the Can¬ 
yon dawns upon you. From the maze of com¬ 
plexities you are now able to grasp a definite 
profound meaning. As over the gigantic bowl 
of a necromancer, you bend and gaze into 
depths that hold you spellbound. And as you 
gaze there drifts into your thought, even 
as a cloud drifts into the light of the rising sun, 
the imitable realization, that out of chaos and 
disorder was born into creation this masterpiece 
of God and Nature, marvelously intricate, divine¬ 
ly simple. 
The Philippine bureau of forestry reports 
that American and European lumbermen are try¬ 
ing to secure large and regular shipments of 
Philippine woods, mainly for cabinet making. 
Experiments with various chemical extin¬ 
guishers for fighting national forest fires have 
not been very successful. The unlimited supply 
of oxygen in the open, forest officers say, tends 
to neutralize the effect of the chemicals. 
A MOUNTAIN TRAIL 
