Part 9
No matter how far you have wandered hitherto, or how many famous valleys and gorges you have seen, this one, the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, will seem as novel to you, as unearthly in the color and grandeur and quantity of its architecture, as if you had found it after death, on some other star; so incomparably lovely and grand and supreme is it above all the other cañons.
It is hoped that Congress will early create a Grand Cañon National Park. The territory most seriously considered embraces a hundred-mile stretch of the cañon with a narrow bit of each rim. This would extend about fifty miles up and an equal distance down the river from Grand Cañon Station. It would thus include only about half the length of the Grand Cañon, and no part of any other cañon. I should like to see it extended another hundred miles up the river. It would then embrace not less than two hundred miles of the river, and would include Marble Cañon and a part of Glen Cañon. But, whatever its length, it should include a broad forest border all the way, on both rims of the cañon.
To enable the public to see this titanic gorge in the most comfortable manner and from the best points of view, it is necessary to have more public roads and trails. There is great need that this unmatched wonder have National Park protection and development. At present the main trail to the bottom of the cañon is a private toll trail!
Visitors to almost any great scene are wont to compare it with some other scene; it reminds them of this place or that place. But when one first views Crater Lake, or while one is in the presence of the Big Trees for the first time, memory is suspended; and when one first beholds the Grand Cañon, it does not remind him of this or that--it completely possesses the observer, sweeps other scenes and places out of mind. Presently comes desire for a thousandfold capacity of feeling and comprehension. The thing is too vast and splendid for ordinary faculties.
I have boated in many of the cañons of the Colorado and have camped and tramped along their rims. Often I have looked down into them when they were filled with mists; when broken clouds hung over them; when sunshine or moonlight illumined their depths, from which I have looked forth under like conditions. But to me, whether in summer or when snow piles the rim, the Grand Cañon never loses its intense impressiveness.
[Illustration: LOOKING WEST FROM NORTH SIDE OF GRAND CAÑON Point Sublime to right in distance. Isis Temple on left.
_By permission of the National Park Service, Department of the Interior_]
The Walhalla Plateau is an extraordinary cañon view-point and is likely to become one of the most famous places on the earth. This narrow plateau thrusts ten miles out into the vast, deep, airy Grand Cañon. It extends from the north rim, between Bright Angel Cañon and the inside bend of the main cañon opposite the Cañon of the Little Colorado. A most commanding peninsula it is, with wide and enormous depths sweeping almost entirely around it. Other commanding view-points on the north rim are Point Sublime and Bright Angel Point. Three excellent view-points on the south rim are Grand View, Hopi Point, and the El Tovar. Grand View is a few miles up the river from the El Tovar Hotel, and opposite Cape Royal of the Walhalla Plateau.
The Colorado River in Arizona flows through a series of twenty vast cañons that have a length of about one thousand miles. Most of them are end to end with only a mere break between. Of these, the Grand Cañon is the cañon of cañons. Counting downstream, it is the eighteenth of the series; counting upstream, the third. The cañon is from seven to fifteen miles wide, and from four thousand to six thousand feet deep. It is an enormous gulf two hundred miles long, in solid rock. Less than one thousand feet across at the bottom, and eight to ten miles across at the top, it may be called a rough V-shaped gorge; or, together with its tributary cañons, it might be called an inverted hollow mountain-range. This range, if turned out upon the plateau, would measure in places more than two hundred miles in length and nearly forty miles in width, with summits rising nearly seven thousand feet; and it would be diversified with ridges, gorges, plateaus, spurs, and peaks.
The Grand Cañon of the Colorado is a masterpiece of erosion--a wonderful story carved in rock. It was excavated and washed out by the river. It is not an ordinary mountain cañon, for it lies in a comparatively level plain or plateau. During the ages, the débris-laden water sliding over its inclined bed of solid rock dug, sawed, and cut the cañon to the bottom. The river not only carried away all the material worn from the bottom, but the thousandfold more that tumbled into it from the ever-caving walls.
Here is color in magnificent array. Most of the strata are perfectly horizontal and of great thickness, and each has an individual color. Many of the walls are brown or red, and there are strata of gray, yellow, grayish brown, and grayish green. All these are massed and arranged in vast and broken color pictures and landscapes, some of which are a mile high and several miles in length.
The top, or rim, of the cañon is in an extensive arid region. Water is extremely scarce; in a number of places not a drop is available within miles. If a boatman is wrecked in the cañon, he has little opportunity of escaping. If he should manage to climb out on the desolate, almost uninhabited plateau, he would be likely to perish for lack of water.
The cañon has a climate of its own. In the bottom, the temperature frequently shows a range of one hundred degrees inside of twenty-four hours. Its great depth and peculiar wall exposure give it a climatic variety. The walls that face the north are much cooler than those facing the south. The temperature at the top differs from that at the bottom, and midway on the walls is a temperature distinct from either of the others. On the rim at El Tovar it may be a winter day; you descend to the river and there find a mild climate, with birds singing and flowers in bloom. The six thousand feet of descent to the river gives a climatic change that approximates a southern journey of two thousand miles. This plateau is forested and on the northern rim of the cañon the tree-growth is heavy.
Flowers bloom in the cañon every month in the year. In the niches and on the terraces are the columbine, lupine, stonecrop, kinnikinnick, dandelion, thistle, and paintbrush. Sagebrush and greasewood occur in many places. The Douglas spruce is found upon the southern wall, the cottonwood and willow in the bottom. Beavers, a few deer, many rabbits, wildcats, and wolves are found in a few places in the bottom of the cañon, and sheep and lions upon the terraces. But the larger part of the unbroken and terraced walls is barren and lifeless.
Among the birds that gladden this gorge are the mockingbird, piñon jay, robin, quail, hummingbird, kingfisher, swallow, and owl. Here, too, you will hear that melodious and hopeful singer the cañon wren. Over this vast gulf butterflies with daintily colored wings float in lovely laziness.
In a number of the cañons, ruined cliff houses are numerous, and a few of these are found far north in Glen Cañon. The walls, in places, are marked with picture writing. This probably was the work of the cliff dwellers or of the Indians.
Much of the cañon region may well be called the "No Man's Land" of the continent. In it are a numerous and assorted lot of men with unknown histories. Mingling with these are Indians, miners, health-seekers, and strange and interesting characters, among whom are aged trappers and prospectors and real cowboys who have survived the days of adventures.
Water is the great sculptor of the face of nature. The gentle raindrop grapples with mountains of solid rock, and with never-ending persistence drags them piecemeal into the sea. Here the material is redeposited in sedimentary strata, and this may emerge into the light in the ages yet to be.
A narrow ditch in the earth will widen by the caving-in of its sides. If the ditch be deepened, the caved-in matter being removed, it will continue to widen. And so it is with this cañon; the weathering or the caving-in of these walls goes ever on. The sharpness of the walls, and many of their striking features, are due to the peculiar climatic conditions that exist in this region--the short rainy seasons and long dry periods. Had there been a more even and abundant precipitation, it is probable that more vegetation would have been produced, which would have had a marked influence upon the walls, giving them a more rounded and less interesting form.
The cañon broadens with the years. Cut narrow by the river, it has gradually widened by the caving-in of the walls. If it had remained as the river cut it, it would now be as narrow at the top as it is in the bottom--a cañon about a mile deep, only a few hundred feet wide, and with perpendicular walls. As it is, the walls rise through a series of shattered inclines, precipitous slopes and terraces, with here and there a vertical section.
Well may the Cañon of the Colorado be called the greatest inanimate wonder in the world. Written in the exposed and remaining rock-strata through which the river has cut its way is a wonderful story of the past, a marvelous and splendid romance. At an enormously remote time the Grand Cañon plateau rose from the primeval sea. After long exposure and great weathering it sank back, remained submerged for ages, and thousands of feet of strata were deposited upon it. Again it emerged, was exposed "a million years and a day," during which æon thousands of feet of strata were eroded away. Again it went down into the sea, and upon it were piled thousands of feet of additional strata. A fourth time it rose slowly above the water. As this plateau was rising, its surface was acted upon by the elements. The part of the plateau surrounding the Grand Cañon proper was the scene of repeated volcanic action and earthquake disturbance. Here the strata have been subjected to repeated faultings, heavings, tiltings, and lava-flows. This uplift imprisoned an enormous Eocene lake that occupied much of what is now the Colorado River basin. This lake the river drained. The drainage was quite probably caused by the fact that the eastern part of the territory was uplifted higher than the western. The drainage-system of the Colorado River, as we now know it, began at that time to take on form and its waters started to cut the cañon. This crude outline covers cycling ages, and probably represents millions of years.
Through several thousand years the plateau slowly rose, and all this time the river was gradually cutting its way down into it. Finally the plateau ceased to rise and long remained at a standstill. After cutting down to its first base level, the river had so little fall that its waters, overladen with débris, ceased deepening the channel. The widening of the cañon went steadily on. Again the plateau slowly rose, perhaps two thousand feet. This uplift increased the fall of the river and again set it to deepening its channel, a work it is still doing.
The waters of the Colorado River are heavily laden with sediment. During the ages it has transported an inconceivable bulk of eroded material to the ocean. Much of this has come from its three hundred thousand square miles of mountainous drainage basin and all the material which formerly occupied the vast spaces of its numerous cañons. Continual caving of the walls compels the river to spend most of its time and energy in breaking up this débris and carrying it forward to the sea. This condition has existed for thousands of years.
It should be borne in mind that the transporting capacity of running water varies as the sixth power of its velocity. Therefore when a stream doubles its velocity it is competent to move particles sixty-four times greater than before. If its rate of flow is trebled, its transporting power is increased seven hundred and twenty-nine times. This goes to explain the frightful havoc of streams at times of flood.
The tributary streams of the Colorado come from arid regions and from the deserts, and are subject to sudden violent cloud-bursts and enormous floods. Though these are of short duration, they are of tremendous force. Earthy matter, rocky débris, and ofttimes hundreds of trees are swept along by the waters that rush in from side cañons like an awful avalanche. Lodged driftwood over one hundred feet above normal river-level tells of the magnitude of these wild floods.
Where a stream has all the load of any given degree of fineness that it is capable of carrying, the entire energy of the descending water is consumed by the transportation of the water and its burden, so that none is applied to erosion. If it has an excess of load, its velocity is thereby lessened and its power to transport is diminished; consequently a part of its load is dropped. If it has less than a full load, it is in a condition to receive more, which it eagerly does. Thereby its bed is swept clean, and then only does erosion become possible. Thus it is seen that the work of transportation may at times monopolize the entire energy of a stream to the exclusion of erosion; or the two works may be carried forward at the same time.
The rapidity of erosion depends upon the hardness, size, and number of the fragments in the flowing water, upon the durability of the stream-bed, and upon the velocity of the current, the element of velocity being of double importance, since it determines not only the size but the speed of the particle with which it works. Transportation is favored by an increased water-supply as much as by increased declivity, because when a stream increases in volume the increase in its velocity outruns the increase in volume, and its transporting power is correspondingly augmented. It is due to this that a stream which is subject to floods--periodical or otherwise--has a much greater transporting power than it could possess were its total water-supply evenly distributed throughout the year.
During one period of volcanic activity the focus of lava-flows into the cañon was at Lava Falls. A number of lava-streams burst directly into the cañon through the walls, while several flows poured their fiery floods over the brink. What a wild and spectacular condition existed while the river, deep in the cañon, received these tributaries of liquid fire! When the flow ceased, the cañon for sixty miles was filled with lava to the depth of about five hundred feet. The lava cooled, and in time was eroded away. The records of this spectacular story are still easily read.
Through these thousand miles of cañon, more than one fifth of which is the Grand Cañon, the river has a fall of about five thousand feet, unevenly divided. There are long stretches of quiet water, but in the Lodore, Cataract, Marble, and Grand Cañons are numerous and turbulent currents flowing amid masses of wild, rocky débris. There are about five hundred bad rapids and many others of lesser power. Most of these rapids are caused by rock-jams--dams formed by masses of rocky débris that have fallen from the walls above or have been swept into the main cañon by tributary streams. A few rapids are caused by ribs of hard, resistant rock that have not been worn down to the level of the softer rock.
The cañon was discovered by Spaniards in 1540. A government expedition visited it in 1859. The report of this expedition, printed in 1861, is accompanied with a picture of an ideal cañon. It is shown as narrow, with appallingly high vertical walls. Lieutenant Ives, who was in charge, thus closes his account:--
Ours has been the first and will doubtless be the last party of Whites to visit this profitless location. It seems intended by Nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed.
Ten years later Major John W. Powell explored the series of cañons from end to end. Hundreds of expeditions that have attempted to go through them have failed. Of the half-dozen that succeeded, one was organized and conducted by Julius F. Stone, a manufacturer of Columbus, Ohio.
"Why," I asked Mr. Stone, "did you take the hazard and endure the acute hardship of this expedition?" His reply was:--
To photograph consecutively the entire cañon system of the Green and Colorado Rivers, which, so far as the upper cañons are concerned, had not yet been done. We also wished to determine the accuracy of some statements heretofore made which seemed reasonably open to question.
Mr. Stone went all the way through the cañon, took hundreds of photographs, and made numerous measurements. He made a thorough study of this cañon, added greatly to our knowledge of it, and corrected a number of misconceptions concerning it.
But [continued Mr. Stone] it was also to get away from work! For the fun of the thing! Year after year the voice of many waters had said: "Come join us in our joyous, boisterous journey to the sea, and you shall know the ecstasy of wrestling with Nature naked-handed and in the open, as befits the measure of a man." It takes on many forms and numberless variations, this thing called play. Its appealing voices come from far and near, in waking and in dreams; from quiet, peaceful places they allure with the assurance of longed-for rest; from the deeps of unfrequented regions they whisper of eager day- and night-time hours brimming with the fullness of heart's desire, while bugle-throated, their challenge sounds forever from every unsealed height.
I presume it is quite true that the chance of disaster (provided we consider death as being such) followed us like the eyes of the forest that note every move of the intruder but never reveal themselves. But somehow or other the snarling threat of the rapids did not creep into the little red hut where fear lives, and so burden our task with irresolution or the handicap of indecision; therefore, whatever dangers may have danced invisible attendance on our daily toil, they rarely revealed themselves in the form of accident, and never in the shape of difficulties too great to be overcome, though sometimes the margin was rather small.
Looking back now at the chance of our having been caught, a shade of hesitation flits over the abiding desire to see it all again, but the free, buoyant life of the open, unvexed by the sedate and superfluous trifles of conventionality, the spirit of fair companionship vouchsafed by the wilderness, and the river that seemed to take us by the hand and lead us down its gorgeous aisles where grandeur, glory, and desolation are all merged into one--these still are as a voice and a vision that hold the imagination with singular enchantment.
Any one interested in the geology of the Grand Cañon will find much in the books of Powell and Dellenbaugh, but best of all are the recent reports of the Geological Survey. For glimpses of the interesting characters who frequent this region, and for a sober account of an array of Grand Cañon adventures, nothing equals the narrative in "Through the Grand Cañon from Wyoming to Mexico," by Ellsworth L. Kolb.
Professor John C. Van Dyke, author of "The Desert," has most ably summed up the Grand Cañon in three monumental sentences: "More mysterious in its depth than the Himalayas in their height.... The Grand Cañon remains not the eighth but the first wonder of the world. There is nothing like it."
The land of form, the realm of music and of song--running, pouring, rushing, rhythmic waters; but preëminently a land of color: flowing red, yellow, orange, crimson and purplish, green and blue. Miles of black and white. This riot and regularity and vast distribution of color in continual change--it glows and is subdued with the shift of shadows, with the view-point of the sun.
X
LASSEN VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARK
An active volcano is the imposing exhibit in the Lassen Volcanic National Park. The fiery Lassen Peak rises in the midst of telling volcanic records that have been made and changed through many thousand years.
This Park is in northern California. It is about one hundred and fifty miles south of the Crater Lake National Park. The territory embraces the southern end of the Cascade Mountains, the northern end of the Sierra, and through it is the cross-connection between the Sierra and the Coast Range. The area is about one hundred and twenty-five square miles. The major portion of the Park lies at an altitude of between six thousand and eight thousand feet, the lowest part being about four thousand feet, while the highest point, the summit of Lassen Peak, is 10,437 feet above the level of the sea. The Park is reached by automobile roads. It is easily accessible from the Southern Pacific Railroad in the upper Sacramento Valley, and from the Western Pacific Railroad on the Feather River.
The scientific and scenic merits of this territory were of such uncommon order that in 1907 they were reserved in the Mount Lassen and Cinder Cone National Monuments. Both these reservations are now merged into the Lassen Volcanic National Park.
Lassen Peak is one of the great volcanoes of the Pacific Coast. Most of the material in it, and that of the surrounding territory, appears to be of volcanic origin. It is in the margin of one of the largest lava-fields in the world. The lava in this vast field extends northward through western Oregon and Washington and far eastward, including southern Idaho and the Yellowstone National Park. It has an area of about two hundred and fifty thousand square miles, over parts of which the lava is of great depth.
Lassen is the southernmost fire mountain of that numerous group of volcanoes that have so greatly changed the surface of the Northwest. Among its conspicuous volcanic companions are Crater Lake, formerly Mount Mazama, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, Mount Baker, and Mount Rainier. Until Lassen Peak burst forth in 1914 it had slumbered for centuries, and was commonly considered extinct. It has probably been intermittently active for ages. Many geologists think that this
## activity has extended through not less than two million years. Just
how long it may show its red tongue and its black clouds of breath is uncertain; and just how violent and how voluminous its eruptions may become are matters of conjecture.
All about Lassen Peak are striking exhibits of vulcanism--fields of lava, quantities of obsidian or natural glass, sulphur springs, hot springs, volcanic sand and volcanic bombs, and recent volcanic topography, including Snag Lake.