"An orchestra of one hundred million pieces and a chorus of a hundred and fifty million voices could be placed comfortably on the opposite side. Can you conceive of such a scene? What do you think of it?"
"I—-I think," stammered Chunky, "that I'd like to be in the box office of that show—-holding on to the ticket money."
Without appearing to have heard Stacy Brown's flippant reply, Professor
Zepplin began again.
"Now that you are about to explore this fairy land it is well that you be informed in advance as to what it is. The river which you see down there is the Colorado. As perhaps some of you, who have studied your geography seriously, may know, the river is formed in southern Utah by the confluence of the Green and Grand, intersecting the north-western corner of Arizona it becomes the eastern boundary of Nevada and California, flowing southward until it reaches the Gulf of California."
"Yes, sir," said the boys politely, filling in a brief pause.
"That river drains a territory of some three hundred thousand square miles, and from its source is two thousand miles long. This gorge is slightly more than two hundred miles long. Am I correct in my figures, Mr. Nance?" demanded the Professor, turning to Dad, a "contradict-me-at-your-peril" expression on his face.
"I reckon you are, sir."
"The river has a winding way——-"
"That's the way with rivers," muttered Chunky to himself.
"Millions of years have been consumed in the building of this great Canyon. In that time ten thousand feet of non-conformable strata have been deposited, elevated, tilted, and washed away; the depression of the Canyon Surface serving for the depositing of Devonian, Lower Carboniferous, Upper Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous; the formation of the vast eocene lake and its total disappearance; the opening of the earth's crust and the venting from its angry stomach the foul lavas—-the mind reels and whirls and grows dizzy——-"