“There is a constant succession of parks and glades--dreamy avenues of grass and flowers winding between sylvan walls, or spreading out in broad open meadows.... The balmy air, the dark and sombre spruces, the pale-green aspens, the golden shafts of sunshine shot through their foliage, the velvet sward--surely this is the home of the woodland nymphs.”
[Illustration: _The Filigreed Walls of Bryce Canyon_]
The Grand Canyon is the supreme epic of erosion; there water has perpetuated its sublimest masterpiece in stone. “The Grand Canyon fills me with awe,” wrote Roosevelt. “It is beyond comparison--beyond description; absolutely unparalleled throughout the wide world.” “Wildness so Godful, cosmic, primeval, bestows a new sense of the earth’s beauty and size,” said John Muir. “By far the most sublime of all earthly spectacles,” is the opinion of world travelers who have studied its grandeur.
The Grand Canyon may be described as a vast and intricate range of sunken mountains cut through a hundred miles of high plateau, “a mountain chain reversed.” Usually it is pictured as a colossal chasm, 220 miles in length, a mile deep and some twelve miles wide; but it is more precisely a measureless labyrinth of canyons with an infinite array of magnificent architectural forms upthrust from their depths. Deep down in the uttermost gorge of granite, the Colorado, “the rushingest, roaringest” river in the land, grinds ceaselessly at the rocks. Numberless rich and vivid tones of gray, green, blue, red and mauve tint its mighty walls and temples, and, independent of these, the sunlight pours daily into the chasm a shifting color parade of exquisite blues and purples, glowing reds and golds.
Of the Kaibab division of the Grand Canyon, Captain Dutton states: “It is the sublimest portion of the chasm, being nearly a thousand feet deeper than any other, far more diversified and complex and is adorned with a multitude of magnificent features, either wanting or much less strongly represented elsewhere.” According to the _U. S. Geological Survey_, the Kaibab division is from seven to fourteen miles wide and from 5,300 to 6,000 feet deep. The elevation of the North Rim is from 8,000 to 9,000 feet and it is eroded extensively into tremendous lateral gorges and amphitheatres. The North Rim has the incomparable Kaibab Forest, uncounted unexplored cliff dwellings, and a summer climate distinguished by unfailingly cool nights. Along its winding edge are a number of noted capes and headlands that reveal some of the grandest aspects of the Canyon.