CHAPTER XXVIII.
Thurstane had strange emotions as he swept into the "caverns measureless to man" of the Great Cañon of the Colorado.
It seemed like a push of destiny rather than a step of volition. An angel or a demon impelled him into the unknown; a supernatural portal had opened to give him passage; then it had closed behind him forever.
The cañon, with all its two hundred and forty miles of marvels and perils, presented itself to his imagination as a unity. The first step within it placed him under an enchantment from which there was no escape until the whole circuit of the spell should be completed. He was like Orlando in the magic garden, when the gate vanished immediately upon his entrance, leaving him no choice but to press on from trial to trial. He was no more free to pause or turn back than Grecian ghosts sailing down Acheron toward the throne of Radamanthus.
Direct statement, and even the higher speech of simile, fail to describe the Great Cañon and the emotion which it produces. Were its fronting precipices organs, with their mountainous columns and pilasters for organ-pipes, they might produce a de profundis worthy of the scene and of its sentiments, its inspiration. This is not bombast; so far from exaggerating it does not even attain to the subject; no words can so much as outline the effects of eighty leagues of mountain sculptured by a great river.
Let us venture one comparison. Imagine a groove a foot broad and twenty feet deep, with a runnel of water trickling at the bottom of it and a fleck of dust floating down the rivulet. Now increase the dimensions until the groove is two hundred and fifty feet in breadth by five thousand feet in depth, and the speck a boat with three voyagers. You have the Great Cañon of the Colorado and Thurstane and his comrades seeking its issue.
"Do you call this a counthry?" asked Sweeny, after an awe-stricken silence. "I'm thinkin' we're gittin' outside av the worrld like."
"An' I'm thinkin' we're gittin' too fur inside on't," muttered Glover. "Look's 's though we might slip clean under afore long. Most low-spirited hole I ever rolled into. 'Minds me 'f that last ditch people talk of dyin' in. Must say I'd rather be in the trough 'f the sea."
"An' what kind av a trough is that?" inquired Sweeny, inquisitive even in his dumps.