Any one interested in the geology of the Grand Cañon will find much in the books of Powell and Dellenbaugh, but best of all are the recent reports of the Geological Survey. For glimpses of the interesting characters who frequent this region, and for a sober account of an array of Grand Cañon adventures, nothing equals the narrative in "Through the Grand Cañon from Wyoming to Mexico," by Ellsworth L. Kolb.
Professor John C. Van Dyke, author of "The Desert," has most ably summed up the Grand Cañon in three monumental sentences: "More mysterious in its depth than the Himalayas in their height.... The Grand Cañon remains not the eighth but the first wonder of the world. There is nothing like it."
The land of form, the realm of music and of song—running, pouring, rushing, rhythmic waters; but preëminently a land of color: flowing red, yellow, orange, crimson and purplish, green and blue. Miles of black and white. This riot and regularity and vast distribution of color in continual change—it glows and is subdued with the shift of shadows, with the view-point of the sun.
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LASSEN VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARK
An active volcano is the imposing exhibit in the Lassen Volcanic National Park. The fiery Lassen Peak rises in the midst of telling volcanic records that have been made and changed through many thousand years.
This Park is in northern California. It is about one hundred and fifty miles south of the Crater Lake National Park. The territory embraces the southern end of the Cascade Mountains, the northern end of the Sierra, and through it is the cross-connection between the Sierra and the Coast Range. The area is about one hundred and twenty-five square miles. The major portion of the Park lies at an altitude of between six thousand and eight thousand feet, the lowest part being about four thousand feet, while the highest point, the summit of Lassen Peak, is 10,437 feet above the level of the sea. The Park is reached by automobile roads. It is easily accessible from the Southern Pacific Railroad in the upper Sacramento Valley, and from the Western Pacific Railroad on the Feather River.
The scientific and scenic merits of this territory were of such uncommon order that in 1907 they were reserved in the Mount Lassen and Cinder Cone National Monuments. Both these reservations are now merged into the Lassen Volcanic National Park.
Lassen Peak is one of the great volcanoes of the Pacific Coast. Most of the material in it, and that of the surrounding territory, appears to be of volcanic origin. It is in the margin of one of the largest lava-fields in the world. The lava in this vast field extends northward through western Oregon and Washington and far eastward, including southern Idaho and the Yellowstone National Park. It has an area of about two hundred and fifty thousand square miles, over parts of which the lava is of great depth.