My Native Land: The United States: its Wonders, its Beauties, and its People; with Descriptive Notes, Character Sketches, Folk Lore, Traditions, Legends and History, for the Amusement of the Old and the Instruction of the YoungCox, James
History
My Native Land: The United States: its Wonders, its Beauties, and its People; with Descriptive Notes, Character Sketches, Folk Lore, Traditions, Legends and History, for the Amusement of the Old and the Instruction of the Young
Cox, James
Indians of North America; United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
Even in area, the cañon is extraordinary. It is large enough to contain
more than one Old World country. It is long enough to stretch across
some of the largest States in the Union. Some of the smaller New England
States would be absolutely swallowed up in the yawning abyss could they,
by any means, be removed to it bodily. An express train running at a
high rate of speed, without a single stop and on a first-class road-bed,
could hardly get from one end of the cañon to the other in less than
five hours, and an ordinary train with the usual percentage of stoppage
would about make the distance between morning and evening.
Reduced to the record of cold figures, the Grand Cañon is made up of a
series of chasms measuring about 220 miles in length, as much as 12
miles in width, and frequently as much as 7,000 feet in depth.
This marvelous feature of American scenery is very fully described in
"Our Own Country," published by the National Publishing Company. In
describing the cañon, that profusely illustrated work says that the
figures quoted "do not readily strike a responsive chord in the human
mind, for the simple reason that they involve something utterly
different from anything that more than 99 per cent. of the inhabitants
of the world have ever seen. The man who gazes upon Niagara for the
first time, is astounded at the depth of the gorge as well as at the
force of the water; and he who has seen Niagara can appreciate somewhat
the marvels of the Grand Cañon, when he bears in mind that the great
wonder of the Western World is for miles at a stretch more than fifty
times as deep as the falls and the gorge, generally admitted to be the
most awful scenic grandeur within reach of the ordinary traveler. Nor is
this all. Visitors to Paris who have enjoyed a bird's-eye view of the
gay city from the summit of Eifel Tower, have felt terribly impressed
with its immense altitude, and have been astounded at the effect on the
appearance of living and inanimate objects so far below them. How many
of the Americans who have been thus impressed by French enterprise, have
realized that in their own country there is a natural gorge, at points
of which the distance between the summit and the base is more than five
times as great as the height of the Eifel Tower?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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