The Grand Cañon of the Colorado | Page 7

closed over it; and the storm
went on, opening and closing until night covered all.
Two days later, when we were on a jutting point about eighteen miles

east of Bright Angel and one thousand feet higher, we enjoyed another
storm of equal glory as to cloud effects, though only a few inches of
snow fell. Before the storm began we had a magnificent view of this
grander upper part of the cañon and also of the Cocanini Forest and
Painted Desert. The march of the clouds with their storm-banners
flying over this sublime landscape was unspeakably glorious, and so
also was the breaking up of the storm next morning--the mingling of
silver-capped rock, sunshine, and cloud.
Most tourists make out to be in a hurry even here; therefore their few
days or hours would be best spent on the promontories nearest the hotel.
Yet a surprising number go down the Bright Angel trail to the brink of
the inner gloomy granite gorge overlooking the river. Deep cañons
attract like high mountains; the deeper they are, the more surely are we
drawn into them. On foot, of course, there is no danger whatever, and,
with ordinary precautions, but little on animals. In comfortable tourist
faith, unthinking, unfearing, down go men, women, and children on
whatever is offered, horse, mule, or burro, as if saying with Jean Paul,
"fear nothing but fear"--not without reason, for these cañon trails down
the stairways of the gods are less dangerous than they seem, less
dangerous than home stairs. The guides are cautious, and so are the
experienced, much-enduring beasts. The scrawniest Rosinantes and
wizened-rat mules cling hard to the rocks endwise or sidewise, like
lizards or ants. From terrace to terrace, climate to climate, down one
creeps in sun and shade, through gorge and gully and grassy ravine, and,
after a long scramble on foot, at last beneath the mighty cliffs one
comes to the grand, roaring river.
To the mountaineer the depth of the cañon, from five thousand to six
thousand feet, will not seem so very wonderful, for he has often
explored others that are about as deep. But the most experienced will be
awe-struck but the vast extent of strange, countersunk scenery, the
multitude of huge rock monuments of painted masonry built up in
regular courses towering above, beneath, and round about him. By the
Bright Angel trail the last fifteen hundred feet of the descent to the river
has to be made afoot down the gorge of Indian Garden Creek. Most of
the visitors do not like this part, and are content to stop at the end of the

horse-trail and look down on the dull-brown flood from the edge of the
Indian Garden Plateau. By the new Hance trail, excepting a few
daringly steep spots, you can ride all the way to the river, where there is
a good spacious camp-ground in a mesquit-grove. This trail, built by
brave Hance, begins on the highest part of the rim, eight thousand feet
above the sea, a thousand feet higher than the head of Bright Angel trail,
and the descent is a little over six thousand feet, through a wonderful
variety of climate and life. Often late in the fall, when frosty winds are
blowing and snow is flying at one end of the trail, tender plants are
blooming in balmy summer weather at the other. The trip down and up
can be made afoot easily in a day. In this way one is free to observe the
scenery and vegetation, instead of merely clinging to his animal and
watching its steps. But all who have time should go prepared to camp
awhile on the riverbank, to rest and learn something about the plants
and animals and the mighty flood roaring past. In cool, shady
amphitheaters at the head of the trail there are groves of white silver fir
and Douglas spruce, with ferns and saxifrages that recall snowy
mountains; below these, yellow pine, nut-pine, juniper, hop-hornbeam,
ash, maple, holly-leaved berberis, cowania, spiraea, dwarf oak, and
other small shrubs and trees. In dry gulches and on taluses and
sun-beaten crags are sparsely scattered yuccas, cactuses, agave, etc.
Where springs gush from the rocks there are willow thickets, grassy
flats, and bright flowery gardens, and in the hottest recesses the delicate
abronia, mesquit, woody compositae, and arborescent cactuses.
The most striking and characteristic part of this widely varied
vegetation are the cactaceae--strange, leafless, old-fashioned plants
with beautiful flowers and fruit, in every way able and admirable.
While grimly defending themselves with innumerable barbed spears,
they offer both food and drink to man and beast. Their juicy globes and
disks and fluted cylindrical columns are almost the only desert wells
that never go dry, and they always seem to rejoice the more and grow
plumper