“Poor mountain sprite,” he added, “thy power and glory are failing! Man flies beyond thee—Thou must learn of him!”
The garrulous old man made a grimace, and muttered something to himself—but we were now by the bridge before the inn, the steamboat glided through the open way, every one hurried on board and immediately it shot above the Fall just as if no Fall existed.
It was evening; I stood on the heights of Trollhätta’s old sluices, and saw the ships with outspread sails glide away over the meadows like large white spectres. The sluice-gates opened with a heavy, crashing sound like that related of the copper gates of the Vehmgericht; the evening was so still; in the deep silence the tone of the Trollhätta Fall was like a chorus of a hundred water-mills, ever one and the same tone and sometimes the ringing of a deep and mighty note that seemed to pass through the very earth—and yet through all this the eternal silence of Nature was felt;—suddenly a great bird with heavily flapping wings flew out of the trees in the deep woods towards the waterfall. Was it the mountain sprite? We must believe so.
Pictures of Sweden (Leipzig, 1851).
THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO
(UNITED STATES)
C. F. GORDON-CUMMING
Probably the greatest chasm in the known world is the grand canyon of the Colorado river (the Rio Colorado Grande), which is a gorge upward of two hundred miles in length, and of tremendous depth. Throughout this distance its vertical crags measure from one to upwards of six thousand feet in depth! Think of it! The highest mountain in Scotland measures 4,418 feet. The height of Niagara is 145 feet. And here is a narrow, tortuous pass where the river has eaten its way to a depth of 6,200 feet between vertical granite crags!
Throughout this canyon there is no cascade; and though the river descends 16,000 feet within a very short distance, forming rushing rapids, it is nevertheless possible to descend it by a raft—and this has actually been done, in defiance of the most appalling dangers and hardships. It is such a perilous adventure as to be deemed worthy of note even in this country, where every prospector carries his life in his hand, and to whom danger is the seasoning of daily life, which, without it, would appear positively monotonous.
I suppose no river in the world passes through scenery so extraordinary as does the Colorado river, in its journey of 2,000 miles from its birthplace in the Rocky mountains, till, traversing the burning plains of New Mexico, it ends its course in the Gulf of California. Its early career is uneventful. In its youth it bears a maiden name, and, as the Green river, wends it way joyously through the upper forests. Then it reaches that ghastly country known as the mauvaises terres of Utah and Arizona—a vast region—extending also into Nevada and Wyoming, which, by the ceaseless action of water, has been carried into an intricate labyrinth of deep gloomy caverns.