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"The spectacle is so symmetrical, and
so completely excludes the outside world and its accustomed standards, it
is with difficulty one can acquire any notion of its immensity."
Higgins, C. A. 1886
If the falls of Niagara were installed in
the Grand Canyon between your visits and you knew it from the newspapers -
next time you stood on that dizzy rim-rock you would probably need good field
glasses and much patience before you could locate the cataract which in
its place looks pretty big. If Mount Washington were plucked up bodily by
its roots - not from where you see it, but from sea-level - and carefully
set down in the Grand Canyon, you probably would not notice it next
morning, unless its dull colors distinguished it in that innumerable
congress of larger and painted giants. All this, which is literally true,
is a mere trifle of what might be said in trying to fix a standard of
comparison for the Grand Canyon. But I fancy there is no standard
adjustable to the human mind."
Lummis, Charles F. 1909
The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately
represented in symbols of speech nor by speech itself. The resources of
the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its
features... The glories and beauties of form, color and sound unite in the
Grand Canyon... It has infinite variety and no part is ever duplicated.
Its colors, although many and complex at any instant, change with the
ascending and declining sun... You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one
view...but to see it you have to toil from month to month through this
labyrinths...but if strength and courage are sufficient for the task, by a
year's toil a concept of sublimity can be obtained never again to be
equaled on hither side of Paradise."
Powell, John Wesley 1909
"It is impossible in a few pages to do
justice, in the smallest degree, to the great gorge itself - "that
sublimest thing on earth" - or to the perils and adventures of our
journey through it. What then shall we write?"
Stanton, Robert B. 1909
"But look again! Those terrifying
walls are moving, are changing! A new light is not only creeping
over them, but is coming out from their very shadows. See those flattened
slopes above the dark sandstone on top of granite; even at this very
moment they are being colored in gorgeous stripes of horizontal
layers of yellow, brown, white, green, purple. What means this wondrous
change? Wherein lies this secret of the great canyon?
Stanton, Robert B. 1909
"To stand upon the edge of this
stupendous gorge, as it receives its earliest greeting from the god of
day, is to enjoy in a moment compensation for long years of ordinary
uneventful life."
Stoddard, John 1898
"...a descent into the Canon is
essential for a proper estimate of its details, and one can never realize
the enormity of certain valleys, till he has crawled like a maimed insect
at their base and looked thence upward to the narrowed sky."
Stoddard, John 1898 |
