In Quest of El Dorado

by Stephen Graham

We talked of President Wilson who was superstitiously unsuperstitious. An extraordinary thing; he did things for preference on the thirteenth of the month, sat down thirteen to dinner, sailed on the thirteenth of the month in cabin No. Thirteen, all of set purpose.

He has turned out to be frightfully unlucky—we agreed.

"Time to make a move now, if we're going to reach a shelter for the night. What do you think?"

Again we lifted our knapsacks and footed it across the stones—to rose-red mountains and cream and green pavilions of stone. Next time we sat to rest and to share an orange together we faced as it were an encampment of all the mountains. There were giant steps from the Northern heights down, down to the black river, and there was the sound of rivers running in the rocks like many rats. We walked to the great slides which overtopped the waters, to the hundred ledges of the serried gray rock which makes the river's bed. Then we passed into vast mountain chambers where, despite company, you felt you were alone whilst judges and distributors of dooms considered you.

Afternoon grew to dusk of evening, and the trail was harder to keep. Monument Creek rushed from underground its short course to the receiving Colorado. We were baffled with the way. Sunset rays far above made roseate the peaks and the ridges but rapidly faded down below, as if light would not carry to us. And night closed sharply in, with starlight and a swelling magnificence of all that was material in the womb of the earth.

Our quest had then become the Hermit Cabin or Camp, as it is called, a place wherein to spend the night. Darkness almost hid the vague Tonto trail, and the way as we traced it grew much wilder. There were many slippery rocks and queer drops which it seemed to us not even a mule could have taken.

We began to think not unhappily of a night in a cave or under some overhanging ledge of the cliff, when far away we espied a lost light that flickered uncertainly in the darkness. That indubitably must be the little rest house on the fast running Hermit River, and we took heart from the light and made for it.

We came to the door and no dog barked. All was utterly silent. We opened the door and faced a man and his wife who were working at a kitchen table on which was spread the most unlikely things to find at the bottom of the Grand Cañon—sugarplums, yes, bright red, green, and yellow squares of candy dusted with white sugar. In their spare time in the long winter evenings the keeper and his spouse made these sugarplums from the pith of the cactus and sold them later for a fair reward. For cactus candy is a good sweet, one made by the Indians before the white man came.

So we dined with the keeper and were given candy for dessert. And we listened to many curious tales of the Cañon and admired the skins of the wild cats the keeper had shot. Then we walked out into the balmy night air, and looked up to the flame points of the stars and the golden lines of their rays. The moon came up slowly from behind some vast black prison wall of stone, and she dimmed the stars. Then the grandeur of moonlight filled the Cañon as it were a precious basin. We slept down below moon and stars and crags upon a happy earth, and all night long the temples of Shiva and Isis and Buddha and the blood-red castle and the white cliff palaces stared into the Arizona sky. And we heard no coyote cry nor felt one chill breath of the snowland above us.

Next day the naked light of dawn lighted up stark cliffs and jagged sky pointers and the green cabins of Hermit Camp under their yellow umbrellas of wilted aspens. And we climbed up from the depth into the cold heights once more. The mountains on all hands grew up with us as we climbed, and towered above and were measured by us, and sank at last beneath us and remained down in the gap with the rushing river and the silences that are below. We looked down at sunset four thousand feet from the rim to the river, and we reflected that in a way the Cañon had possessed us wholly and we in our hearts possessed only part of it. It voided us out at the top, it plumbed our hearts, it took away our breaths, it turned the last page of the word books of our minds.