The Little Colorado was well named, for the river itself was but a small stream, but the narrow gorge by which it entered was impressive. It is the mingling of the Little Colorado with Marble Canyon that constitutes the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.
But it in reality is not quite so magically logical as that, since from miles below the entrance of the Little Colorado, the canyon walls fall away from the river and the canyon is like a great valley with perpendicular walls removed for several miles on either side of the river, and rising to a height of five thousand feet. Before us lay the great gorge, where the river seemed to lose itself in granite gloom as it wound downwards.
"Let's make a camp in this valley," suggested Jim, "and do some climbing before we take our last sprint down the river."
"I guess it will be our last too," groaned Tom, gloomily.
"Oh shut up!" commanded Jim wearily, giving him a kick with his moccasined foot. "You ought to have lived in the times of Jeremiah."
"You ought to have lived in the Stone Age," retorted Tom, "it would have just suited you."
We made camp near a pleasant looking green stretch of shore and on the following day we started out on our little picnic excursion that consumed several days.
It would take another book to describe what we saw on that trip. After some remarkably hard work and interesting climbing we reached the rim of the canyon, some six thousand feet above the Colorado, that seemed but a narrow rivulet and its long familiar roar was reduced to a gentle purr of sound.
We saw below and around us one of the unequalled panoramas of the world. Back of us was the black plateau of the great forest land, called the "Kaibab," covered with pines, and beneath our feet was the Grand Canyon itself. Twelve miles from rim to rim and in the chasm were towers, pinnacles, terraced plateaus, palaces and temples, and in the distance, faint and fair formations of beauty and of light.
The coloring was the most wonderful of all. Deep down and far away was the purple gneiss of the gorge, ribboned with granite, then on either side of the river rose the various architectural forms and structures of the canyon.