This sense of color and light is perhaps the strongest impression that remains. Though it is quite as deep and precipitous as the Royal gorge it is not so gloomy and frowning; though the cataracts are greater than those at Toltec, they are not so fear-inspiring. In place of dark and impenetrable walls, here are varied façades of lofty and majestic design, yet each unlike its neighbor and all of the most brilliant hue. The cliffs are architectural, suggestive of human kinship and more than marvelous—they are interesting.
Then there is the brilliant and resistless river. At Toltec it is only a murmuring cataract; in the Royal gorge a stream you may often leap across; the Rio de Las Animas is deep and quiet. But here rushes along its gigantic flume a great volume of hurried water, rolled over and over in headlong haste, hurled against solid abutments to recoil in showers of spray or to sheer off in sliding masses of liquid emerald. Now some quiet nook gives momentary rest. The water is still and deep. Small rafts of seedy foam swing slowly around the edges, tardy to dissolve. The rippled sand can be seen in wavy lines far underneath like the markings on a duck’s breast. The surplus water curves like bent glass over the dam that rims the pool on its lower side, and beyond is a whirlpool of foam and the hissing tumult of shattered waves amid which rise the sharp crests of crimson bowlders flounced with snowy circles of foam.
GUNNISON’S BUTTE.
Alternating with the vast pillars and the slick faces of red rock are the nooks and ravines where trees grow, flowers bloom and the eye can get a glimpse of a triangle of violet sky; while sometimes a silken skein of white water can be traced down the deepest recesses of the glen, and the gleam of swallow’s wings flitting in colonies about their circular adobes bracketed against the wall.
These facts, noted like short hand memoranda upon the brain as they quickly flash by, slowly return to the memory and feed recollection, as the mind in after days elaborates the impression made by each, and summons a series of separated and leisurely pictures before the imagination; but no writer can depict for another what the form of these pictures shall be. I recite to you the elements—stupendous measurements, majestic forms, splendid colors, the gleaming green and white of water, the blue and gold of sun and sky, the crystalline sparkle of reddened rocks; but you must yourself receive these elements if you are to paint adequately to your fancy the pictures of the cañon. It is not literary cant, but the literal truth, when I say that to be understood, this marvelous pathway through the mountains must be seen. And having seen it, you have enriched your memory beyond anything you could have foretold.