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No one can know the Grand Canyon, in all its phases. It is one of thos
sights that words cannot exaggerate. What does it matter how deep you
say--in hundreds or thousands of feet--the Canyon is, when you cannot
see to the bottom of it? Strict literalists may stick out for the
exact figures in feet and inches from rim to river--elsewhere given
as the scientists of the United States Geological Survey have
recorded them--but to me they are almost valueless. Its depth is
beyond human comprehension in figures, and so is its width. And the
eye of the best trained man in the world cannot grasp all its
features of wall and butte and canyon, of winding ridge and curving
ravine, of fell precipice and rocky gorge, in a week, a month, a
year, or a lifetime. Hence words can but suggest; nothing can
describe the indescribable; nothing can picture what no man ever has
seen in its completeness. What Men Have Said of the Canyon. Men have stood before it and
called it "an inferno, swathed in soft celestial fires;" but what is a
inferno? And who ever saw the fires of heaven? Words! words! words!
Charles Dudley Warner, versed in much and diverse world-scenery,
mountain-sculpture, canyon-carvings, and plain-sweep, confessed: "I
experienced for a moment an indescribable terror of nature, a
confusion of mind, a fear to be alone in such a presence. With all
its grotesqueness and majesty of form and radiance of color, creation
seemed in a whirl." When the reader thinks of grotesqueness, what
images come to his mind? A Chinese joss, perhaps; a funny human face
on the profile of a rock, but nothing so vast, so awful, so large as
this. The word "majesty" suggests a kingly presence, a large man of
dignified mien, or a sequoia standing supreme over all other trees in
the forest. But a thousand men of majesty could be placed unseen in
one tiny rift in this gorge, and all the sequoias of the world could
be planted in one stretch of this Canyon, and never be noticed by the
most careful watcher on the rim. Another, reaching the Canyon at night, declared that she and her
companions seemed to be "standing in midair, while below, the dark
depths were lost in blackness and mystery." Again mere words! words!
For whoever stood in mid-air?
Still another calls it "the most ineffable thing that exists within th
range of man," and later explains when he stands on the brink of it;
"And where the Grand Canyon begins, words stop." Yet he goes on and
uses about four more pages of words, and pictures after words have
stopped, to tell what he felt and saw. And the remarkable thing is
that his experience is that of all the wisest men who have ever seen
it. They know they cannot describe it, but they proceed to exhaust
their vocabularies in talking about it, and in trying to make clear
to others what they saw and felt. 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 fel
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 fort
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.
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