Page:Titan of chasms - the Grand Canyon of Arizona (IA titanofchasmsgra00atchrich).pdf/14

 Having returned to the plateau, it will be found that the descent into the canyon has bestowed a sense of intimacy that almost amounts to a mental grasp of the scene. The terrific deeps that part the walls of hundreds of castles and turrets of mountainous bulk may be approximately located in barely discernible pen-strokes of detail, and will be apprehended mainly through the memory of upward looks from the bottom, while towers and obstructions and yawning fissures that were deemed events of the trail will be wholly indistinguishable, although they are known to lie somewhere flat beneath the eye. The comparative insignificance of what are termed grand sights in other parts of the world is now clearly revealed. Twenty Yosemites might lie unperceived anywhere below. Niagara, that Mecca of marvel seekers, would not here possess the dignity of a trout stream. Your companion, standing at a short distance on the verge, is an insect to the eye.

Still, such particulars can not long hold the attention, for the panorama is the real overmastering charm. It is never twice the same. Although you think you have spelt out every temple and peak and escarpment, as the angle of sunlight changes there begins a ghostly advance of colossal forms from the farther side, and what you had taken to be the ultimate wall is seen to be made up of still other isolated sculptures, revealed now for the first time by silhouetting shadows. The scene incessantly changes, flushing and fading, advancing into crystalline clearness, retiring into slumberous haze.

Should it chance to have rained heavily in the night, next morning the canyon is completely filled with fog. As the sun mounts, the curtain of mist suddenly breaks into cloud fleeces, and while you gaze these fleeces rise and dissipate, leaving the canyon bare. At once around the bases of the lowest cliffs white puffs begin to appear, creating a scene of unparalleled beauty as their dazzling cumuli swell and rise and their number multiplies, until once more they overflow the rim, and it is as if you stood on some land’s end looking down upon a formless void. Then quickly comes the complete dissipation, and again the marshaling in the depths, the upward advance, the total suffusion and the speedy vanishing, repeated over and over until the warm walls have expelled their saturation.

Long may the visitor loiter upon the verge, powerless to shake loose from the charm, tirelessly intent upon the silent transformations until the sun is low in the west. Then the canyon sinks into mysterious purple shadow, the far Shinumo Altar is tipped with a golden ray, and against a leaden horizon the long line of the Echo Cliffs reflects a soft brilliance of indescribable beauty, a light that, elsewhere, surely never was on sea or land. Then darkness falls, and should there be a moon, the scene in part revives in silver light, a thousand spectral forms projected from inscrutable gloom; dreams of mountains, as in their sleep they brood on things eternal.