Page:Titan of chasms - the Grand Canyon of Arizona (IA titanofchasmsgra00atchrich).pdf/10





beautiful. It flashes instant communication of all that architecture and painting and music for a thousand years have gropingly striven to express. It is the soul of Michael Angelo and of Beethoven.

A canyon, truly, but not after the accepted type. An intricate system of canyons, rather, each subordinate to the river channel in the midst, which in its turn is subordinate to the whole effect, That river channel, the profoundest depth, and actually more than 6,000 feet below the point of view, is in seeming a rather insignificant trench, attracting the eye more by reason of its somber tone and mysterious suggestion than by any appreciable characteristic of a chasm, It is perhaps five miles distant in a straight line, and its uppermost rims are nearly 4,000 feet beneath the observer, whose measuring capacity is entirely inadequate to the demand made by such magnitudes. One can not believe the distance to be more than a mile as the crow flies, before descending the wall or attempting some other form of actual measurement.

Mere brain knowledge counts for little against the illusion under which the organ of vision is here doomed to labor. Yonder cliff, darkening from white to gray, yellow, and brown as your glance descends, is taller than the Washington Monument. The Auditorium in Chicago would not cover one-half its perpendicular span. Yet it does not greatly impress you. You idly toss a pebble toward it, and are surprised to note how far the missile falls short. By and by you will learn that it is a good half mile distant, and when you go