1
Its discovery was part of the fruitless quest of El Dorado by Coronado—the greatest hole in the world and nothing in it. He had hoped to find another Mexico in the North and despoil it of its jewels. Like the Vandal he was, he plunged into the American Sahara to loot another Rome. Cibola and Quivira were his glittering dreams. He rode in all two thousand miles, cactus and alkali-whitened plains all the way. He fought not men but deserts; instead of storied Cibola he found the mud huts of the Zunyi Indians, rich only in their personal adornments of turquoise and silver; and instead of fantastic Quivira with princes in golden armor, he found near the great bend of the Arkansas River, the tent dwellers of what is now Wichita. The mirage of El Dorado appeared constantly before him and his followers. His horsemen wandered in many directions seeking tidings of gold or of kingdoms to conquer. And one of them came, as was inevitable, to the great gap in the earth hundreds of miles long, leagues across, leagues as it seemed downward, the Cañon del Grande, and the descent of it was as a descent to the hidden heart of the world. It added one more fantastic page to the story of the King of Spain's new lands wherein "of antres vast and deserts idle" much was spoken.
Geologists do not agree as to the number of thousands of years ago the accident occurred which made the Cañon. We shall, therefore, appear pathetically human in our narrow gaze if we say, "Now nearly four hundred years have passed since the Spaniards discovered it." There are dwellings of cave men on the northern cliff, inaccessible as the nests of the white eagles who stare from the ledges. And yet it does mean something to us living now that it is nearly four hundred years since our civilization took cognizance of the Grand Cañon, this bit of chaos left over at the creation of the world.
We have tamed Niagara with power houses, and they have put lunch counters among the branches of the giant trees of California. Nearly all the natural wonders of America have been altered. But the Grand Cañon remains changeless and unchangable. It is true it has become a wonder gaze for tourists, a "stop-over" 'twixt Los Angeles and Chicago. But there is nothing in that. Ninety-six in every hundred of those who visit the Cañon merely look at it, go along the rim, spend a night at the railway hotel, and resume their journey next day. But four in a hundred venture down into the abyss.
After going to Cibola Ewart and I decided to leave this part of the country, but before departing we went to the Grand Cañon together. So with knapsacks on our shoulders we left New Mexico for the wilderness of Northern Arizona. And we determined to walk down into the depths of the Cañon, from the snow and ice of the dreadful plateau down to flowers blooming and gentle airs.
Early one morning in December, therefore, we stood on the verge, and in its sublimity its first awful grandeur was disclosed; its gigantic abysses and gray-green pyramids, its rosy, castellated heights gleaming with sunshine.
"Some hole in the wall, I'll say," cried a Mr. Babbitt, consuming a "stack of hot cakes" at the Harvey lunch counter. "Me to hike it down there—not ... on ... your ... life!"
The trail is heavily frosted, steep and narrow. It is even difficult to stop oneself in the first slides that are strides. Both of us sat down suddenly and unpremeditatedly once or twice. We held on to scrub and jagged rock, footing the snow gingerly.
But something of magic had taken us. The rock walls in long slabs looked at us, came up to us, stared at us. There was a new morning silence in which occasionally we heard the wings of tiny birds fluttering. As it were climbing the outer stairway or stone spiral of some great dungeon or keep built on a mighty rock—so we looked out over abysses, and were granted at moments unexpected views of frowning and dreadful cliffs. The eyes spoke to the mind of vaster surfaces and greater bulks of rock than it yet had known. And an intellectual perspective was obtained.
Going downward rapidly we met trees made tiny, and they started to our feet like feathers. Rocks which from above had been merely formalized bulks gained in character as if we were approaching drawbridges of fantastic castles. Old red pyramids torn by the ages stood before us in awful actuality, exhibiting the myriad scars and crusts of time.
The trail, an Indian one, was there before the Spaniards came, for the Indians used it and walked it nearly a hundred miles. But it is improved now and made safe for the tourist on a mule—safer still for the man upon his feet. The descent is naturally rapid. One strides over hundreds, over thousands of feet, which it is labor indeed to climb up. One moment one is facing the great cream and pale green fissured wall of the upper limestone, the "key stone," as it is called. At the next breathing space you are below that and facing red cliff which develops before the downward-going eyes into a mighty wall, whilst the cream rock is left far above you, a cliff in the sky.
At three thousand feet below, all the cold airs have gone; there are green leaves on the trees. The flowers of the willow herb have gone to seed but the leaves are tender. Japanese sunflowers are still poised blooming in the sunshine, and where spring water comes freshening from rock walls the gentle violet snuggles and is at home.
But we come out on an exposed plateau, above the madly rushing Colorado River but below the main masses of the ravine. Between wall and wall of the Cañon rise gigantic isolated rocks as if there were a city built in the trough of the river. Rim to rim the gap is sixteen miles across—so there is "verge enough and ample space" for adamantine temples, pavilions and towers. The plateau is bowlder-strewn and only enlivened by the irislike yucca stems and by small pink cactus and prickly pear. On our left is an appalling great red fortress of stone whose sheer wall cuts across the life light of the zenith; on our right and below us is the rock cleavage of the hidden Colorado River; whilst above us in a seraphically serene noonday bask the domes of isolated rocks fantastically named and yet happily named too—the Temple of Shiva, the Temple of Isis, the Temple of Buddha.
On the left as we walk on, comes into view, far aloft, a cream-colored sky castle, all happy in the sun. But, lowering the eyes, there resumes its sway the fortress whose great wall we are turning, and we begin to see its vast, blood-red and green base. We walk into a cold shadow which seems as substantial as the rocks themselves, and we cross the broad stony scarp of precipitous cliffs, going downward, till we come right under what seems an ancient castle—out of fairyland or the England of the Mort d'Arthur, a quadrilateral of blood in a hideous pool of darkness.
But no giant sallied forth with blood-stained ax. No one is at home in any fortress, castle, tower, or temple—no more than in the rooms of the stone and mud-closed caves of the cliff dwellers. Not even a tourist—no, not a mule. Only certainly wild asses in great numbers wherever there is any pasture, uncatchable donkeys who sneeze at you at the most unexpected moments.
Ewart and I sat by a spring at noon and rested and talked whilst the tumbling water spoke to us also, and we boiled a pot over dry weeds and bits of cactus later on and had our lunch. It was a happy moment—there was a sense of escape, as if we had gone to Southern California or Mexico and got away from the rigorous winter of the exalted deserts of the South.
"By George!" Ewart cried, "I nearly took a toss up above. What have you on your boots; I have nails."
I had rubber on mine.
"Yes, I could not get a foothold on that ice; I was reduced to hands and knees."
"Curious, they say they have had no human accidents here. The last accident was when eight horses yoked together and laden with T. N. T. went over the brink and fell a sheer five hundred feet."
"I did not hear of that."
"Yes, one of the horses was new to the Cañon and proved unruly. He fouled his neighbor and he slipped over the side, pulling all seven horses after him."
"That must have been a terrible splash."
"But the T. N. T. did not explode."
"No!"
"The horses were all killed instantaneously though; they jumped right out of their skins."
"You'd think the Grand Cañon would tempt suicides. It's a certain and sudden death. Dramatic and spectacular too!"
"Too much time for reflection and meditation before you get here," I hazarded. "The man coming to commit suicide changes his mind before he gets here and goes down on a mule instead."
Ewart laughed.
"You are a fellow who ought to be cautious," I said after a while.
"Why specially?"
"Because I don't think, strictly speaking, that you are over lucky. You are a person who has bad accidents. I've known you in three, any of which might have cost you your life."
"Well, I don't know," said Ewart. "I'd say I was lucky. I've come through the war and two motor accidents, and escaped with my life up till now."
He jumped nervously.
"Oh!" he cried unexpectedly. "Uberufen!" and turned round him to find a piece of wood to touch.
But there was no wood handy. We were in a woodless ravine. He seemed quite anxious and snatched at a piece of dead cactus.
I laughed heartily.
"What do you mean by 'Uberufen'?" I cried.
"I think one ought not to be too sure," said Wilfrid solemnly.
"What a fix, to be in a place with no wood to touch," said I mirthfully. "Supposing under such circumstances one was to touch one's head, implying modestly that it was the nearest thing to wood one could find, do you think the Fate that watches over us would be appeased?"
Ewart smiled.
We talked of President Wilson who was superstitiously unsuperstitious. An extraordinary thing; he did things for preference on the thirteenth of the month, sat down thirteen to dinner, sailed on the thirteenth of the month in cabin No. Thirteen, all of set purpose.
He has turned out to be frightfully unlucky—we agreed.
"Time to make a move now, if we're going to reach a shelter for the night. What do you think?"
Again we lifted our knapsacks and footed it across the stones—to rose-red mountains and cream and green pavilions of stone. Next time we sat to rest and to share an orange together we faced as it were an encampment of all the mountains. There were giant steps from the Northern heights down, down to the black river, and there was the sound of rivers running in the rocks like many rats. We walked to the great slides which overtopped the waters, to the hundred ledges of the serried gray rock which makes the river's bed. Then we passed into vast mountain chambers where, despite company, you felt you were alone whilst judges and distributors of dooms considered you.
Afternoon grew to dusk of evening, and the trail was harder to keep. Monument Creek rushed from underground its short course to the receiving Colorado. We were baffled with the way. Sunset rays far above made roseate the peaks and the ridges but rapidly faded down below, as if light would not carry to us. And night closed sharply in, with starlight and a swelling magnificence of all that was material in the womb of the earth.
Our quest had then become the Hermit Cabin or Camp, as it is called, a place wherein to spend the night. Darkness almost hid the vague Tonto trail, and the way as we traced it grew much wilder. There were many slippery rocks and queer drops which it seemed to us not even a mule could have taken.
We began to think not unhappily of a night in a cave or under some overhanging ledge of the cliff, when far away we espied a lost light that flickered uncertainly in the darkness. That indubitably must be the little rest house on the fast running Hermit River, and we took heart from the light and made for it.
We came to the door and no dog barked. All was utterly silent. We opened the door and faced a man and his wife who were working at a kitchen table on which was spread the most unlikely things to find at the bottom of the Grand Cañon—sugarplums, yes, bright red, green, and yellow squares of candy dusted with white sugar. In their spare time in the long winter evenings the keeper and his spouse made these sugarplums from the pith of the cactus and sold them later for a fair reward. For cactus candy is a good sweet, one made by the Indians before the white man came.
So we dined with the keeper and were given candy for dessert. And we listened to many curious tales of the Cañon and admired the skins of the wild cats the keeper had shot. Then we walked out into the balmy night air, and looked up to the flame points of the stars and the golden lines of their rays. The moon came up slowly from behind some vast black prison wall of stone, and she dimmed the stars. Then the grandeur of moonlight filled the Cañon as it were a precious basin. We slept down below moon and stars and crags upon a happy earth, and all night long the temples of Shiva and Isis and Buddha and the blood-red castle and the white cliff palaces stared into the Arizona sky. And we heard no coyote cry nor felt one chill breath of the snowland above us.
Next day the naked light of dawn lighted up stark cliffs and jagged sky pointers and the green cabins of Hermit Camp under their yellow umbrellas of wilted aspens. And we climbed up from the depth into the cold heights once more. The mountains on all hands grew up with us as we climbed, and towered above and were measured by us, and sank at last beneath us and remained down in the gap with the rushing river and the silences that are below. We looked down at sunset four thousand feet from the rim to the river, and we reflected that in a way the Cañon had possessed us wholly and we in our hearts possessed only part of it. It voided us out at the top, it plumbed our hearts, it took away our breaths, it turned the last page of the word books of our minds.