The Lure of the Camera

by Charles S. Olcott

Some years ago I had occasion to attend a stereopticon lecture on the Grand Cañon. The speaker was enthusiastic and his pictures excellent. But he fired off all his ammunition of adjectives with the first slide. For an hour and a half we sat listening to an endless repetition of “grand,” “magnificent,” “sublime,” “awe-inspiring,” etc. As we walked home a young lad in our party, who was evidently studying rhetoric in school, was heard to inquire, “Mother, wouldn’t you call that an example of tautology?” I fear I should merit the same criticism if I were to undertake a description of the cañon. Yet we may profitably stand, for a few moments, on Hopi Point, a promontory that projects far out from the rim, and try to measure it with our eyes.

That great wall on the opposite side is just thirteen miles away. The strip of white at its upper edge, which in my photograph measures less than a quarter of an inch, is a stratum of limestone five hundred feet thick. Here and there we catch glimpses of the river. It is five miles away, and forty-six hundred feet—nearly a perpendicular mile—below the level upon which we are standing. We look to the east and then to the west, but we see only a small part of the chasm. It melts away in the distance like a ship at sea. From end to end it is two hundred and seventeen miles. It is not one cañon, but thousands. Every river that runs into the Colorado has cut out its own cañon, and each of these has its countless tributaries. It has been estimated that if all the cañons were placed end to end in a straight line they would stretch twenty thousand miles.

THE GRAND CAÑON OF ARIZONA

If this mighty gash in the earth’s surface were only a great valley with gently sloping sides and a level floor, it would still be impressive and inspiring, though not so picturesque. But its floor is filled with a multitude of temples and castles and amphitheaters of stupendous size, all sculptured into strange shapes by the erosion of the waters. Any one of these, if it could be transported to the level plains of the Middle West or set up on the Atlantic Coast, would be an object of wonder which hundreds of thousands would visit. Away off in the distance is the Temple of Shiva, towering seventy-six hundred and fifty feet above the sea and fifty-two hundred and fourteen feet (nearly a mile) above the river. Take it to the White Mountains and set it down in the Crawford Notch. From its summit you would look down upon the old Tip-Top house of Mount Washington, eight hundred feet below. Much nearer, and a little to the right, is the “Pyramid of Cheops,” a much smaller butte but rising fifty-three hundred and fifty feet above the sea-level. If the “Great Pyramid of Cheops” in Egypt were to be placed by its side it would scarcely be visible from where we stand, for it would be lost in the mass of rocky formations. Mr. G. Wharton James, who has spent many years of his life in the study of the cañon, says that he gazed upon it from a certain point every year for twenty years and often daily for weeks at a time. He continues, “Such is the marvelousness of distance that never until two days ago did I discover that a giant detached mountain fully eight thousand feet high and with a base ten miles square ... stood in the direct line of my sight, and as it were, immediately before me.” He discovered it only because of a peculiarity of the light. It had always appeared as a part of the great north wall, though separated from it by a cañon fully eight miles wide.

How are we to realize these enormous depths? Those isolated peaks and mountains, of which there are hundreds, are really only details in the vast stretch of the cañon. Not one of them reaches above the level of the plain on the north side. Tourists who have traveled much are familiar with the great cathedrals of Europe. Let us drop a few of them into the cañon. First, St. Peter’s, the greatest cathedral in the world. We lower it to the level of the river, and it disappears behind the granite cliff. Let the stately Duomo of Milan follow. Its beautiful minarets and multitude of statues are lost in the distance, and though we place it on the top of St. Peter’s, it, too, is out of sight behind the cliffs. We must have something larger, so we place on top of Milan the great cathedral of Cologne, five hundred and one feet high, and the tips of its two great spires barely appear above the point from which we watched the swiftly rolling river. Now let us poise on the top of Cologne’s spires, two great Gothic cathedrals of France, Notre Dame and Amiens, one above the other, then add St. Paul’s of London, the three great towers of Lincoln, the triple spires of Lichfield, Canterbury with its great central tower, and the single spire, four hundred and four feet high, of Salisbury. We are still far from the top. These units of measurement are too small. Let us add the tallest office building in the world, seven hundred and fifty feet high, and then the Eiffel Tower, of nine hundred and eighty-six feet. We shall still need the Washington Monument, and if my calculations are correct, an extension ladder seventy-five feet long on top of that, to enable us to reach the top of the northern wall. One might amuse himself indefinitely with such comparisons. Perhaps they are futile, but it is only by some such method that one can form the faintest conception of the colossal dimensions of this, the greatest chasm in the world.

Still more bewildering is the attempt to measure the cañon in periods of time. There were two great periods in its history—first, the period of upheaval, and second, that of erosion. When the geologic movement was in process which created the continent, with the Rocky Mountains for its backbone, this entire region became a plateau, vastly higher than at present, with its greatest elevation far to the north. Then the rivers began to carry the rains and snows to the sea, carving channels for themselves through the rocky surface. The steep decline caused the waters to flow with swiftness. The little streamlets united to form larger ones, and these in turn joined their waters in still greater streams. The larger the stream and the swifter the flow, the faster the channel would be carved. The softer rocks gave slight resistance, but when the granite or harder formations were encountered, the streams would eddy and whirl about in search of new channels, the hard rocks forming a temporary dam. In this way the hundreds of buttes were formed. The Green River and the Grand unite to form the Colorado, the entire course of this great waterway stretching for two thousand miles. The two streams carry down a mighty flood—in former ages it was far mightier than now—which in its swift descent has ground the rocks into sand and silt and with resistless force carried them down to the sea. Those great buttes and strangely sculptured temples, each a formidable mountain, were not thrown up by volcanic forces, but have been carved out of the solid earth by the erosion of the waters. That river five miles away, of which we see only glimpses here and there, was the tool with which the Great Sculptor carved all this wondrous chasm. Major Powell has calculated that the amount of rock thus ground to pieces and carried away would be equivalent to a mass two hundred thousand square miles in area and a full mile in thickness. Think of excavating a mile deep the entire territory of New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia, and dumping it all into the Atlantic. Then think that this is the task the Colorado River and other geologic forces have accomplished, and pause to wonder how long it took to complete the process! If the Egyptian kings who built the pyramids had come here for material they would have seen the chasm substantially as we see it!

The geologic story of the cañon’s origin is too far beyond our comprehension. Let us turn to the Indian account. A great chief lost his wife and refused to be comforted. An Indian God, Ta-vwoats, came to him and offered to conduct him to a happier land where he might see her, if he would promise to cease mourning. Then Ta-vwoats made a trail through the mountains to the happy land and there the chief saw his wife. This trail was the cañon of the Colorado. The deity made the chief promise that he would reveal the path to no man, lest all might wish to go at once to heaven, and in order to block the way still more effectually he rolled a mad surging river through the gorges so swift and strong that it would destroy any one who dared attempt to enter heaven by that route.

I have often been asked which is the greater wonder, the Grand Cañon of the Colorado River or the Yellowstone National Park. The question is unanswerable. One might as well attempt to say whether the sea is more beautiful than the sky. If mere size is meant, the Grand Cañon is vastly greater. If all the geysers of the Yellowstone were placed down in the bottom of the Grand Cañon at the level of the river, and all were to play at once, the effect would be unnoticed from Hopi Point. The cañon of the Yellowstone River, impressive as it is, would be lost in one of the side cañons of the Colorado.