They Have Handsome Little Cars On The Route, But Though
The Passengers Paid Full Fare, They Put Us Into A Baggage Car
Because The Season Was Over, And In Order To See Anything I Was
Obliged To Sit On The Floor At The Door.
The singular grandeur
cannot be described.
It is a mere gash cut by the torrent,
twisted, walled, chasmed, weather stained with the most brilliant
coloring, generally dark with shadow, but its utter desolation
occasionally revealed by a beam of intense sunshine. A few
stunted pines and cedars, spared because of their inaccessiblity,
hung here and there out of the rifts. Sometimes the walls of the
abyss seemed to meet overhead, and then widening out, the rocks
assumed fantastic forms, all grandeur, sublimity, and almost
terror. After two hours of this, the track came to an end, and
the canyon widened sufficiently for a road, all stones, holes,
and sidings. There a great "Concord coach" waited for us,
intended for twenty passengers, and a mountain of luggage in
addition, and the four passengers without any luggage sat on the
seat behind the driver, so that the huge thing bounced and swung
upon the straps on which it was hung so as to recall the worst
horrors of New Zealand staging. The driver never spoke without
an oath, and though two ladies were passengers, cursed his
splendid horses the whole time. Formerly, even the most profane
men intermitted their profanity in the presence of women, but
they "have changed all that." Every one I saw up there seemed in
a bad temper.
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