And
in this very fact what a wonderful tribute lies to the power of the Canyon;
that a wise and prudent man is led to strive to do what he vows he will not
do, and knows he cannot do.
One well-known poet exclaims: "It was like sudden death." yet she is
still alive. Again, after breakfast, she wrote: "My courage rose to meet
the greatness of the world." Then she "crawled half prostrate" to the
barest and highest rocks she could find on the rim, and confessed: "It
made a coward of me; I shrank and shut my eyes, and felt crushed and beaten
under the intolerable burden of the flesh. For humanity intrudes here; in
these warm and glowing purple spaces disembodied spirits must range and
soar, souls purged and purified and infinitely daring." Yet here I have
heard the wild brayings of hungry mules and the worse ravings of angry
men - none of them impressed as was the soul of the poet.
One money-making business man declared that he went to the rim at
night-time, and when he and his friends reached the spot they put forth
their hands and found - "an absolute end. We clutched vainly at black space.
To fathom this space we thrust over a big stone. No sound came back. The
pit was bottomless - the grave of the world. The mystery fascinated, the
void beckoned. We scarcely knew why we did not obey the summons - why we did
not abandon the present, and, by following the big stone, escape to the
future." And yet he had no urgent creditors bothering him. His financial
position was secure and unquestioned. His family relations were all that
could be desired. Wonderful, indeed, that a mere feature of natural scenery
could have led him to wonder why he didn't leave all the luxuries and
certainties of life, and leap into the unknown future! Yet that is just the
way the Canyon affected a sober business man of steady judgment.
A well-known writer declares: "It is a paradox of chaos and repose, of
gloom and radiance, of immeasurable desolation and enthralling beauty. It
is a despair and a joy; a woe and an ecstasy; a requiem and a hallelujah; a
world-ruin and a world-glory - everything in antithesis of such titanic
sort." I agree with him, and regard his expressions as indicative of my own
sensations.
Yet, when a reverend gentleman calls it a "delirium of nature," I cannot
agree with him. The delirium might be in his own mind, but there is no
delirium here. Neither does it seem to me that a certain university
president expresses things with any more wisdom or effectiveness, when he
says that it "impressed him with its infinite laziness." Lazy? When once,
in the far-distant past, after rising from the primeval sea, it sank back
again and deposited twelve thousand feet of strata, then lifted them out
into the sunshine, carved eleven thousand feet of them away, and sent them
dashing down the river to fill up the Gulf of California and make the
Mohave and Colorado Deserts? Lazy? When, after that was done, it sank
again, and allowed a thousand feet of Cambrian to be deposited; then two
thousand feet of Carboniferous; then Permian, Triassic, Jurassic and
Cretaceous, until the three thousand feet were increased to two miles of
deposits. Then it began to lift itself up again. Lazy? When lifting up two
miles' thickness of strata for the clouds and their children to carve away?
And it lifted and lifted, until it destroyed a vast Eocene lake, which
covered as large an area as perhaps half a dozen Eastern States, and at the
same time carried away about twelve thousand feet of strata. Lazy? When you
consider that from north to south, for a hundred or more miles, the whole
region has been heaving and tossing, curving and buckling, arching and
crumpling its strata, faulting by rising, faulting by sinking, until the
geologist who would study the faults finds, in the area of one half-mile,
near the mouth of Shinumo Creek, his work for a lifetime cut out for him.
No! No! Mr. College President! You must look more fully. You must guess
again! The Canyon is not lazy. It is merely a gigantic natural
representation of yourself. You are the embodiment of energy of body, mind
and soul; yet you are never seen hurried or disturbed. You have the
serenity of genius. So with the Canyon. It has done and is doing great
things. It has been a persistent worker during the millions of years of its
existence, but it has the calm serenity of consciousness of strength. What
you took to be laziness is the restfulness of divine power.
When First Seen. These are some of the effects the Canyon has upon men. I
once walked up to the rim with a lawyer, who to-day is one of the foremost
figures of the San Francisco bar, a man of lion-like courage and almost
reckless bravery. At the first glimpse he fell on his knees, clasped me
around mine, and begged me to take him away, declaring that a gift of all
Arizona would not lead him to take another glimpse into its awesome depths.
I know of one lady who, for weeks afterwards, would wake up almost every
night, and feel herself falling into the fathomless gorge.
Yet the next day the lawyer went with me down to the river, and to this day
declares it was the "most memorable trip of his life;" while the timid
lady, to my own knowledge, has made over five trips to the Canyon.
