The actual settlement that goes by the name of the Grand Canyon is twenty miles further on. The trail follows closely the rim of the Canyon, cutting through the fringe of the "Coconino National Forest," with its stately pine trees that crowd up to the very edge of the plateau.
When the end of the trail is reached, it is as though the traveller had arrived at the edge of the world. On the right is a luxurious, low-built hotel all but toppling over the edge; on the left is a railway station; and that is all. The road almost doubles back on itself, swerving due south towards the Continental Trail eighty miles away. I do not mean to imply that at the end of this world there will be either a luxurious hotel or a railway station at the service of the weary traveller, but the appearance of finality of all things is complete when one is faced with that terrible chasm ahead.
For three days and three nights I sojourned at the Canyon, content to gaze upon its ever-changing colours, and to marvel at the wealth of beauty and variation of spectacle that lay in its mighty bosom, always changing, always fresh, always more wonderful than before. One day after breakfast I began strolling down the narrow "Bright Angel Trail" that leads from the summit to the river. Between two and three feet wide in most places, it is wonderfully built and kept in excellent repair for the mule-back parties of tourists that daily descend its seven tortuous miles in the morning and ascend them again in the evening. In places it is like a spiral pathway down an almost perpendicular wall. One looks over and sees it doubling and folding and twisting on itself like a thin white line until it is lost behind some prominence thousands of feet below.
I did not mean to walk down. Walking is not my forte; I only set out to take a few photographs. I have the best of reasons for believing that people never walk down the Canyon. Instead they bulge upon diminutive mules in strings of twenty or thirty or more and make the descent slowly, nervously, solemnly, and more or less in comfort. True, there are places where the trail is so precipitous that they have to dismount for safety's sake, but to walk the whole way would be absurd.
