alcoves, cirques, amphitheaters, and side canyons--that, were you to
trace the rim closely around on both sides, your journey would be

nearly a thousand miles long. Into all these recesses the level,
continuous beds of rock in ledges and benches, with their various

colors, run like broad ribbons, marvelously beautiful and effective
even at a distance of ten or twelve miles. And the vast space these

glorious walls inclose, instead of being empty, is crowded with
giganticarchitectural rock forms gorgeously colored and adorned with

towers and spires like works of art.
Looking down from this level plateau, we are more impressed with a

feeling of being on the top of everything than when looking from the
summit of a mountain. From side to side of the vast gulf, temples,

palaces, towers, and spires come soaring up in thick array half a mile
or nearly a mile above their sunken, hidden bases, some to a level

with our standpoint, but none higher. And in the inspiring morning
light all are so fresh and rosy-looking that they seem new-born; as

if, like the quick-growing crimson snowplants of the California woods,
they had just sprung up, hatched by the warm, brooding, motherly

weather.
In trying to describe the great pines and sequoias of the Sierra, I

have often thought that if one of these trees could be set by itself
in some city park, its grandeur might there be impressively realized;

while in its home forests, where all magnitudes are great, the weary,
satiated traveler sees none of them truly. It is so with these

majestic rock structures.
Though mere residual masses of the plateau, they are dowered with the

grandeur and repose of mountains, together with the finely chiseled
carving and modeling of man's temples and palaces, and often, to a

considerable extent, with their symmetry. Some, closely observed,
look like ruins; but even these stand plumb and true, and show

architectural forms loaded with lines strictly regular and decorative,
and all are arrayed in colors that storms and time seem only to

brighten. They are not placed in regular rows in line with the river,
but "a' through ither," as the Scotch say, in lavish, exuberant

crowds, as if nature in wildest extravagance held her bravest
structures as common as gravel-piles. Yonder stands a spiry cathedral

nearly five thousand feet in height, nobly symmetrical, with sheer
buttressed walls and arched doors and windows, as richly finished and

decorated with sculptures as the great rock temples of India or Egypt.
Beside it rises a huge castle with archedgateway, turrets, watch-towers,

ramparts, etc., and to right and left palaces, obelisks, and
pyramids fairly fill the gulf, all colossal and all lavishly painted

and carved. Here and there a flat-topped structure may be seen, or
one imperfectly domed; but the prevailing style is ornate Gothic, with

many hints of Egyptian and Indian.
Throughout this vast extent of wild architecture--nature's own capital

city--there seem to be no ordinary dwellings. All look like grand and
important public structures, except perhaps some of the lower

pyramids, broad-based and sharp-pointed, covered with down-flowing
talus like loosely set tents with hollow, sagging sides. The roofs

often have disintegrated rocks heaped and draggled over them, but in
the main the masonry is firm and laid in regular courses, as if done

by square and rule.
Nevertheless they are ever changing; their tops are now a dome, now a

flat table or a spire, as harder or softer strata are reached in their
slow degradation, while the sides, with all their fine moldings, are

being steadily undermined and eaten away. But no essential change in
style or color is thus effected. From century to century they stand

the same. What seems confusion among the rough earthquake-shaken
crags nearest one comes to order as soon as the main plan of the

various structures appears. Every building, however complicated and
laden with ornamental lines, is at one with itself and every one of

its neighbors, for the same characteristic controlling belts of color
and solid strata extend with wonderful constancy for very great

distances, and pass through and give style to thousands of separate
structures, however their smaller characters may vary.

Of all the various kinds of ornamental work displayed--carving,
tracery on cliff faces, moldings, arches, pinnacles--none is more

admirably effective or charms more than the webs of rain-channeled
taluses. Marvelously extensive, without the slightest appearance of

waste or excess, they cover roofs and dome tops and the base of every
cliff, belt each spire and pyramid and massy, toweringtemple, and in

beautiful continuous lines go sweeping along the great walls in and
out around all the intricatesystem of side canyons, amphitheaters,

cirques, and scallops into which they are sculptured. From one point
hundreds of miles of the fairy embroidery may be traced. It is all so

fine and orderly that it would seem that not only had the clouds and
streams been kept harmoniously busy in the making of it, but that

every raindrop sent like a bullet to a mark had been the subject of a
separate thought, so sure is the outcome of beauty through the stormy

centuries. Surely nowhere else are there illustrations so striking of
the natural beauty of desolation and death, so many of nature's own

mountain buildings wasting in glory of high desert air--going to dust.
See how steadfast in beauty they all are in their going. Look again

and again how the rough, dusty boulders and sand of disintegration
from the upper ledges wreathe in beauty for ashes--as in the flowers

of a prairie after fires--but here the very dust and ashes are
beautiful.

Gazing across the mighty chasm, we at last discover that it is not its
great depth nor length, nor yet these wonderful buildings, that most

impresses us. It is its immense width, sharply defined by precipitous
walls plunging suddenly down from a flat plain, declaring in terms

instantly apprehended that the vast gulf is a gash in the once
unbroken plateau, made by slow, orderly erosion and removal of huge

beds of rocks. Other valleys of erosion are as great--in all their
dimensions some are greater--but none of these produces an effect on

the imagination at once so quick and profound, coming without study,
given at a glance. Therefore by far the greatest and most influential

feature of this view from Bright Angel or any other of the canyon
views is the opposite wall. Of the one beneath our feet we see only

fragmentary sections in cirques and amphitheaters and on the sides of
the out-jutting promontories between them, while the other, though far

distant, is beheld in all its glory of color and noble proportions--the
one supreme beauty and wonder to which the eye is ever turning.

For while charming with its beauty it tells the story of the
stupendous erosion of the canyon--the foundation of the unspeakable

impression made on everybody. It seems a gigantic statement for even
nature to make, all in one mighty stone word, apprehended at once like

a burst of light, celestial color its natural vesture, coming in glory
to mind and heart as to a home prepared for it from the very

beginning. Wildness so godful, cosmic, primeval, bestows a new sense
of earth's beauty and size. Not even from high mountains does the

world seem so wide, so like a star in glory of light on its way
through the heavens.

I have observed scenery-hunters of all sorts getting first views of
yosemites, glaciers, White Mountain ranges, etc. Mixed with the

enthusiasm which such scenery naturally excites, there is often weak
gushing, and many splutter aloud like little waterfalls. Here, for a

few moments at least, there is silence, and all are in dead earnest,
as if awed and hushed by an earthquake--perhaps until the cook cries

"Breakfast!" or the stable-boy "Horses are ready!" Then the poor
unfortunates, slaves of regular habits, turn quickly away, gasping and

muttering as if wondering where they had been and what had enchanted
them.

Roads have been made from Bright Angel Hotel through the Coconino
Forest to the ends of outstanding promontories, commanding extensive

views up and down the canyon. The nearest of them, three or four
miles east and west, are O'Neill's Point and Rowe's Point; the latter,

besides commanding the eternally interesting canyon, gives wide-sweeping
views southeast and west over the dark forest roof to the San

Francisco and Mount Trumbull volcanoes--the bluest of mountains over
the blackest of level woods.

Instead of thus riding in dust with the crowd, more will be gained by
going quietly afoot along the rim at different times of day and night,

free to observe the vegetation, the fossils in the rocks, the seams
beneath overhanging ledges once inhabited by Indians, and to watch the

stupendous scenery in the changing lights and shadows, clouds,
showers, and storms. One need not go hunting the so-called "points of

interest." The verge anywhere, everywhere, is a point of interest
beyond one's wildest dreams.