The Grand Canyon Of Arizona Only One Grand Canyon. The ancient world had its seven wonders, but they were all the work of man. The modern world of the United States has easily its seven wonders--Niagara, the Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Natural Bridge, the Mammoth Cave, the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon of Arizona--but they are all the work of God. It is hard, in studying the seven wonders of the ancients, to decide which is the most wonderful, but now that the Canyon is known all men unite in affirming that the greatest of all wonders, ancient or modern, is the Grand Canyon of Arizona. Some men say there are several Grand Canyons, but to the one who knows there is but one Grand Canyon. The use of the word to name any lesser gorge is a sacrilege as well as a misnomer.
Not in the spirit of carping criticism or of reckless boasting are these words uttered. It is the dictum of sober truth. It is wrong to even unintentionally mislead a whole people by the misuse of names. Until made fully aware of the facts, the traveling world are liable to error. They want to see the Grand Canyon. They are shown these inferior gorges, each called the Grand Canyon, and, because they do not know, they accept the half-truth. The other canyons they see are great enough in themselves to claim their closest study, and worthy to have distinctive names bestowed upon them. But, as Clarence Dutton, the eminent geologist, has well said in his important scientific monograph written for the United States Geological Survey: "The name Grand Canyon repeatedly has been infringed for purposes of advertisement. The Canyon of the Yellowstone has been called 'The Grand Canyon.' A more flagrant piracy is the naming of the gorge of the Arkansas River 'The Grand Canyon of Colorado,' and many persons who have visited it have been persuaded that they have seen the great chasm. These river valleys are certainly very pleasing and picturesque, but there is no more comparison between them and the mighty chasm of the Colorado River than there is between the Alleghanies and the Himalayas.
Sublimity of the Grand Canyon. "Those who have long and carefully studied the Grand Canyon of the Colorado do not hesitate for a moment to pronounce it by far the most sublime of all earthly spectacles. If its sublimity consisted only in its dimensions, it could be set forth in a single sentence. It is more than two hundred miles long, from five to twelve miles wide, and from five thousand to six thousand feet deep. There are in the world valleys which are longer and a few which are deeper. There are valleys flanked by summits loftier than the palisades of the Kaibab. Still the Grand Canyon is the sublimest thing on earth. It is so not alone by virtue of its magnitudes, but by virtue of the whole its tout ensemble."What, then, is this Grand Canyon, for which its friends dare to make so large and bold a claim?
It is a portion--a very small portion--of the waterway of the Colorado River, and it is so named to differentiate it from the other canyons of the same river. The canyon system of the Colorado River is as vast in its extent as is the Grand Canyon in its quality of sublimity. For it consists of such a maze of canyons--the main canyons through which the river itself runs; the canyons through which its tributaries run; the numberless canyons tributary to the tributary canyons; the canyons within canyons, that, upon the word of no less an authority than Major Powell, I assert that if these canyons were placed end for end in a straight line they would reach over twenty thousand miles! Is it possible for the human mind to conceive a canyon system so vast that, if it were so placed, it would nearly belt the habitable globe?
Impression on Beholders. And the principal member of this great system has been named The Grand Canyon, as a conscious and meaningful tribute to its vastness, its sublimity, its grandeur and its awesomeness. It is unique; it stands alone. Though only two hundred and seventeen miles long, it expresses within that distance more than any one human mind yet has been able to comprehend or interpret to the world. Famous word-masters have attempted it, great canvas and colormasters have tried it, but all alike have failed. It is one of the few things that man is utterly unable to imagine until he comes in actual contact with it. A strange being, a strange flower, an unknown reptile, a unique machine, or a strange and unknown anything, almost, within the ken of man, can be explained to another so that he will reasonably comprehend it; but not so with the Grand Canyon. I had an illustration of this but a few days ago. A member of my own household, keenly intelligent and well-read, who had heard my own descriptions a thousand and one times, and had seen photographs and paintings, without number, of the Canyon, came with me on her first visit to the camp where I am now writing. As the carriage approached the rim at Hotouta Amphitheatre and gave her the first glimpse of the Canyon, she drew back terrified, appalled, horror-stricken. Subsequent analysis of her emotions and the results of that first glimpse revealed a state of mind so overpowered with the sublimity, vastness, depth and power of the scene, that her impressions were totally inadequate, altogether lacking in detail and accuracy, and at complete variance with her habitual observations.
