Seeing the West: Suggestions for the Westbound Traveller — John Shaqi
Seeing the West: Suggestions for the Westbound TravellerDumbell, K. E. M. (Kate Ethel Mary)
History
Seeing the West: Suggestions for the Westbound Traveller
Dumbell, K. E. M. (Kate Ethel Mary)
West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
Charles Dudley Warner said of this spot: “Human experience has no
prototype of this region, and the imagination has never conceived of its
forms and colours.... The scene is one to strike dumb with awe, or to
unstring the nerves.... All that we could comprehend was a vast
confusion of amphitheatres and strange architectural forms resplendent
with colour.... Streaks of solid hues 1,000 feet in width, yellows
mingled with white and gray, orange, dull red, brown, blue, carmine, and
green all blending in the sunlight into one transcendent effusion of
splendour.”
Here is truly one of the most marvellous nature wonders of the world,
and comparatively few of us have seen it. It is stupendous! It is
incomprehensible!
The canyon lies chiefly in Arizona, though Utah, Nevada, and California
touch each a corner. It is nearly 300 miles long and in places 6,600
feet deep; the width at the top is from 8 to 20 miles. The river lying
below is in places 300 feet wide, and is 2,400 feet above sea level; yet
looking down from the rim it seems the smallest stream, the merest
thread.
The Santa Fé trains run twice a day to the canyon.[1] There is a fine,
big hotel, the El Tovar, with every modern comfort, built on a site
7,000 feet above sea level and quite near the rim, commanding such a
view as can hardly be equalled in the world.
Mr. C. A. Higgins in his “The Titan of Chasms,” says: “Stolid indeed is
he who can front the awful scene and view its unearthly splendour of
colour and form without quaking knee or tremulous breath. An inferno
swathed in soft, celestial fires; a whole chaotic under-world, just
emptied of primeval floods and waiting for a new creative word; eluding
all sense of perspective or dimension, outstretching the faculty of
measurement, overlapping the confines of definite apprehension; a
boding, terrible thing, unflinchingly real, yet spectral as a dream....
A labyrinth of huge architectural forms, endlessly varied in design,
fretted with ornamental devices, festooned with lace-like webs formed of
talus from the upper cliffs and painted with every colour known to the
palette in pure, transparent tones of marvellous delicacy.
“A canyon, truly, but not after the accepted type. An intricate system
of canyons, rather.... Only by descending into the canyon may one arrive
at anything like comprehension of its proportions, and the descent
cannot be too urgently recommended to every visitor who is sufficiently
robust to bear a reasonable amount of fatigue.”
There are several paths down the southern wall of the canyon, and the
trip is safely made on horseback. A word of advice here in regard to
clothing may be of use. It is absolutely necessary to have good, warm
clothing with one, for the night, which is spent on the floor; but for
the descent a light shade hat is advisable; the heat of the afternoon
sun can be very oppressive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account