Geologists do not agree as to the number of thousands of years ago the accident occurred which made the Cañon. We shall, therefore, appear pathetically human in our narrow gaze if we say, "Now nearly four hundred years have passed since the Spaniards discovered it." There are dwellings of cave men on the northern cliff, inaccessible as the nests of the white eagles who stare from the ledges. And yet it does mean something to us living now that it is nearly four hundred years since our civilization took cognizance of the Grand Cañon, this bit of chaos left over at the creation of the world.
We have tamed Niagara with power houses, and they have put lunch counters among the branches of the giant trees of California. Nearly all the natural wonders of America have been altered. But the Grand Cañon remains changeless and unchangable. It is true it has become a wonder gaze for tourists, a "stop-over" 'twixt Los Angeles and Chicago. But there is nothing in that. Ninety-six in every hundred of those who visit the Cañon merely look at it, go along the rim, spend a night at the railway hotel, and resume their journey next day. But four in a hundred venture down into the abyss.
After going to Cibola Ewart and I decided to leave this part of the country, but before departing we went to the Grand Cañon together. So with knapsacks on our shoulders we left New Mexico for the wilderness of Northern Arizona. And we determined to walk down into the depths of the Cañon, from the snow and ice of the dreadful plateau down to flowers blooming and gentle airs.
Early one morning in December, therefore, we stood on the verge, and in its sublimity its first awful grandeur was disclosed; its gigantic abysses and gray-green pyramids, its rosy, castellated heights gleaming with sunshine.
"Some hole in the wall, I'll say," cried a Mr. Babbitt, consuming a "stack of hot cakes" at the Harvey lunch counter. "Me to hike it down there—not ... on ... your ... life!"
The trail is heavily frosted, steep and narrow. It is even difficult to stop oneself in the first slides that are strides. Both of us sat down suddenly and unpremeditatedly once or twice. We held on to scrub and jagged rock, footing the snow gingerly.
But something of magic had taken us. The rock walls in long slabs looked at us, came up to us, stared at us. There was a new morning silence in which occasionally we heard the wings of tiny birds fluttering. As it were climbing the outer stairway or stone spiral of some great dungeon or keep built on a mighty rock—so we looked out over abysses, and were granted at moments unexpected views of frowning and dreadful cliffs. The eyes spoke to the mind of vaster surfaces and greater bulks of rock than it yet had known. And an intellectual perspective was obtained.
Going downward rapidly we met trees made tiny, and they started to our feet like feathers. Rocks which from above had been merely formalized bulks gained in character as if we were approaching drawbridges of fantastic castles. Old red pyramids torn by the ages stood before us in awful actuality, exhibiting the myriad scars and crusts of time.
The trail, an Indian one, was there before the Spaniards came, for the Indians used it and walked it nearly a hundred miles. But it is improved now and made safe for the tourist on a mule—safer still for the man upon his feet. The descent is naturally rapid. One strides over hundreds, over thousands of feet, which it is labor indeed to climb up. One moment one is facing the great cream and pale green fissured wall of the upper limestone, the "key stone," as it is called. At the next breathing space you are below that and facing red cliff which develops before the downward-going eyes into a mighty wall, whilst the cream rock is left far above you, a cliff in the sky.
At three thousand feet below, all the cold airs have gone; there are green leaves on the trees. The flowers of the willow herb have gone to seed but the leaves are tender. Japanese sunflowers are still poised blooming in the sunshine, and where spring water comes freshening from rock walls the gentle violet snuggles and is at home.