In visiting the canon we have the choice of going on horseback or on foot. While the latter method is much harder, yet one feels safer upon his own feet while moving along the steep and narrow trail. Our start is made in the cool air of the early morning. Leaving the top of the plateau, where among the pines the summer air is seldom sultry, and the winters are cold and snowy, we descend, until, by luncheon time, we are far below the heights and in the midst of an almost tropical climate. This difference in climatic features between the top and bottom of the canon is equal to the change which the traveller experiences in a trip from the pine forests of the northern United States to the cactus-covered plains of Arizona. As we look down from the top of the trail it does not seem possible to pass the great cliffs below, and yet there must be a way, since others have gone before us. All that we have to do is simply to follow the beaten path. Nature has conveniently left narrow shelves, crevices, and less precipitous slopes here and there, which need only the application of the pick and shovel to be made passable even for pack animals. Where the trail winds into shady recesses, we find stunted fir and pine trees clinging to the crevices and stretching their roots down into the waste rock collected upon projecting ledges. Down, down we go. The belt of the yellow pine and fir is left behind, and we come to the habitat of the pinon pine and juniper. These two will flourish where there is less moisture than is needed by the trees which grow nearer the top. Soon the trees have all disappeared and such plants as the greasewood, cactus, and agave take their place. Here, if it were not for the walls of rock rising on every hand, we might imagine ourselves upon one of the desert plains of Arizona. [Illustration: FIG. 5.--CLIFFS ON THE TRAIL INTO THE GRAND CANON] New views open at every turn in the trail, as it winds along the narrow shelves of rock with precipitous walls above and below. Now it zigzags back and forth down a gentle slope, but is soon stopped by another precipice. In one place, to escape a rocky point, the trail has been carried around the face of a cliff on a sort of shelf made of logs. It then passes through a crevice formed by the splitting away of a huge piece of the wall. In many places the grade is so steep that the trail is made practically a stairway, for the steps are necessary to keep animals from slipping. Step by step we descend until the slope becomes more gentle and a sort of terrace is reached, where men are at work developing a copper mine. Everything needed for the mine is carried down packed upon the backs of sure-footed burros. Even the water has to be brought in kegs from a little spring still deeper in the canon.