Day after day, little parties of sightseers go down into the canyon, down Bright Angel trail, on the backs of donkeys. It is thirteen miles by the trail and then the river is still far below them, so far that they can hardly hear the noise it makes between its rocky banks.
Many had said that when one has seen the Grand Canyon he has forgotten all about the Canyon of the Yellowstone. But I did not find it so. Nothing can ever make me forget the Canyon of the Yellowstone. The two canyons are so different and so distinct that comparisons are not possible, but contrasts are. In the Grand Canyon the colors are heavier; in the Yellowstone Canyon the colors have the brightness of the butterfly. The one is compact, the other immense. The one is definite, conceivable and comprehensible; the other indefinite, inconceivable and incomprehensible. The one produces the sensations of nearness and dearness; the other of aloofness and vagueness. The one is like a beautiful woman arrayed in many colors; the other like an angel clothed in austerity.
When one has seen these two canyons, the west has nothing more to offer him in the way of scenery. They sum up all the wonders that nature has wrought in these cyclopean regions of the continent. One wants to see them again, to see them many times again. In the last year of his life he might desire to take a last look at them. And, if in the providence of the theologians, we are all translated into angels, for one I shall often be tempted to desert the glories celestial for these glories terrestial, to hover over the scene where the Yellowstone River tumbles over its precipices into the gorgeous depths below and where the Colorado River roars at the bottom of the canyon which is the creation of its own might and fury.
Transcriber’s Notes
[Page 29]: “Portugese colonies” changed to “Portuguese colonies”