Happy nowadays is the tourist, with earth’s wonders, new and old, spreadinvitingly open before him, and a host of able workers as his slaves makingeverything easy, padding plush about him, grading roads for him, boringtunnels, moving hills out of his way, eager, like the devil, to show him allthe kingdoms of the world and their glory and foolishness, spiritualizingtravel for him with lightning and steam, abolishing space and time and almosteverything else. Little children and tender, pulpy people, as well asstorm-seasoned explorers, may now go almost everywhere in smooth comfort, crossoceans and deserts scarce accessible to fishes and birds, and, dragged by steelhorses, go up high mountains, riding gloriously beneath starry showers ofsparks, ascending like Elijah in a whirlwind and chariot of fire.
First of the wonders of the great West to be brought within reach of thetourist were the Yosemite and the Big Trees, on the completion of the firsttranscontinental railway; next came the Yellowstone and icy Alaska, by theNorthern roads; and last the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, which, naturally thehardest to reach, has now become, by a branch of the Santa Fé, the mostaccessible of all.
Of course with this wonderful extension of steel ways through our wildernessthere is loss as well as gain. Nearly all railroads are bordered by belts ofdesolation. The finest wilderness perishes as if stricken with pestilence. Birdand beast people, if not the dryads, are frightened from the groves. Too oftenthe groves also vanish, leaving nothing but ashes. Fortunately, nature has afew big places beyond man’s power to spoil—the ocean, the two icyends of the globe, and the Grand Cañon.
When I first heard of the Santa Fé trains running to the edge of the GrandCañon of Arizona, I was troubled with thoughts of the disenchantment likely tofollow. But last winter, when I saw those trains crawling along through thepines of the Cocanini Forest and close up to the brink of the chasm at BrightAngel, I was glad to discover that in the presence of such stupendous scenerythey are nothing. The locomotives and trains are mere beetles and caterpillars,and the noise they make is as little disturbing as the hooting of an owl in thelonely woods.
In a dry, hot, monotonous forested plateau, seemingly boundless, you comesuddenly and without warning upon the abrupt edge of a gigantic sunkenlandscape of the wildest, most multitudinous features, and those features,sharp and angular, are made out of flat beds of limestone and sandstone forminga spiry, jagged, gloriously colored mountain-range countersunk in a level grayplain. It is a hard job to sketch it even in scrawniest outline; and try as Imay, not in the least sparing myself, I cannot tell the hundredth part of thewonders of its features—the side-cañons, gorges, alcoves, cloisters, andamphitheaters of vast sweep and depth, carved in its magnificent walls; thethrong of great architectural rocks it contains resembling castles, cathedrals,temples, and palaces, towered and spired and painted, some of them nearly amile high, yet beneath one’s feet. All this, however, is less difficultthan to give any idea of the impression of wild, primeval beauty and power onereceives in merely gazing from its brink. The view down the gulf of color andover the rim of its wonderful wall, more than any other view I know, leads usto think of our earth as a star with stars swimming in light, every radiantspire pointing the way to the heavens.
But it is impossible to conceive what the cañon is, or what impression itmakes, from descriptions or pictures, however good. Naturally it is untellableeven to those who have seen s