I need not emphasize the disadvantage in regard to beauty of a land that can for half the year only keep a vernal appearance by irrigation; but to eyes accustomed to it there is something pleasing in the contrast of the green valleys with the brown and gold and red of the hills. The picture in my mind for the future of the Land of the Sun, of the mountains, of the sea--which is only an enlargement of the picture of the present--is one of great beauty. The rapid growth of fruit and ornamental trees and the profusion of flowers render easy the making of a lovely home, however humble it may be. The nature of the industries--requiring careful attention to a small piece of ground--points to small holdings as a rule. The picture I see is of a land of small farms and gardens, highly cultivated, in all the valleys and on the foot-hills; a land, therefore, of luxuriance and great productiveness and agreeable homes. I see everywhere the gardens, the vineyards, the orchards, with the various greens of the olive, the fig, and the orange. It is always picturesque, because the country is broken and even rugged; it is always interesting, because of the contrast with the mountains and the desert; it has the color that makes Southern Italy so poetic. It is the fairest field for the experiment of a contented community, without any poverty and without excessive wealth.
CHAPTER XV.
SOME WONDERS BY THE WAY.--YOSEMITE.--MARIPOSA TREES.--MONTEREY.
I went to it with reluctance. I shrink from attempting to say anything about it. If you knew that there was one spot on the earth where Nature kept her secret of secrets, the key to the action of her most gigantic and patient forces through the long eras, the marvel of constructive and destructive energy, in features of sublimity made possible to mental endurance by the most exquisite devices of painting and sculpture, the wonder which is without parallel or comparison, would you not hesitate to approach it? Would you not wander and delay with this and that wonder, and this and that beauty and n.o.bility of scenery, putting off the day when the imagination, which is our highest gift, must be extinguished by the reality? The mind has this judicious timidity. Do we not loiter in the avenue of the temple, dallying with the vista of giant plane-trees and statues, and noting the carving and the color, mentally shrinking from the moment when the full glory shall burst upon us? We turn and look when we are near a summit, we pick a flower, we note the shape of the clouds, the pa.s.sing breeze, before we take the last step that shall reveal to us the vast panorama of mountains and valleys.
I cannot bring myself to any description of the Grand Canon of the Colorado by any other route, mental or physical, than that by which we reached it, by the way of such beauty as Monterey, such a wonder as the Yosemite, and the infinite and picturesque deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. I think the mind needs the training in the desert scenery to enable it to grasp the unique sublimity of the Grand Canon.
The road to the Yosemite, after leaving the branch of the Southern Pacific at Raymond, is an unnecessarily fatiguing one. The journey by stage--sixty-five miles--is accomplished in less than two days--thirty-nine miles the first day, and twenty-six the second. The driving is necessarily slow, because two mountain ridges have to be surmounted, at an elevation each of about 6500 feet. The road is not a "road" at all as the term is understood in Switzerland, Spain, or in any highly civilized region--that is, a graded, smooth, hard, and sufficiently broad track. It is a makeshift highway, generally narrow (often too narrow for two teams to pa.s.s), cast up with loose material, or excavated on the slopes with frequent short curves and double curves.
Like all mountain roads which skirt precipices, it may seem "pokerish,"
but it is safe enough if the drivers are skilful and careful (all the drivers on this route are not only excellent, but exceedingly civil as well), and there is no break in wagon or harness. At the season this trip is made the weather is apt to be warm, but this would not matter so much if the road were not intolerably dusty. Over a great part of the way the dust rises in clouds and is stifling. On a well-engineered road, with a good road-bed, the time of pa.s.sage might not be shortened, but the journey would be made with positive comfort and enjoyment, for though there is a certain monotony in the scenery, there is the wild freshness of nature, now and then an extensive prospect, a sight of the snow-clad Nevadas, and vast stretches of woodland; and a part of the way the forests are magnificent, especially the stupendous growth of the sugar-pine. These n.o.ble forests are now protected by their inaccessibility.
From 1855 to 1864, nine years, the Yosemite had 653 visitors; in 1864 there were 147. The number increased steadily till 1869, the year the overland railroad was completed, when it jumped to 1122. Between 4000 and 5000 persons visit it now each year. The number would be enormously increased if it could be reached by rail, and doubtless a road will be built to the valley in the near future, perhaps up the Merced River. I believe that the pilgrims who used to go to the Yosemite on foot or on horseback regret the building of the stage road, the enjoyment of the wonderful valley being somehow cheapened by the comparative ease of reaching it. It is feared that a railway would still further cheapen, if it did not vulgarize it, and that pa.s.sengers by train would miss the mountain scenery, the splendid forests, the surprises of the way (like the first view of the valley from Inspiration Point), and that the Mariposa big trees would be farther off the route than they are now. The traveller sees them now by driving eight miles from Wawona, the end of the first day"s staging. But the romance for the few there is in staging will have to give way to the greater comfort of the many by rail.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE YOSEMITE DOME.]
The railway will do no more injury to the Yosemite than it has done to Niagara, and, in fact, will be the means of immensely increasing the comfort of the visitor"s stay there, besides enabling tens of thousands of people to see it who cannot stand the fatigue of the stage ride over the present road. The Yosemite will remain as it is. The simplicity of its grand features is una.s.sailable so long as the Government protects the forests that surround it and the streams that pour into it. The visitor who goes there by rail will find plenty of adventure for days and weeks in following the mountain trails, ascending to the great points of view, exploring the canons, or climbing so as to command the vast stretch of the snowy Sierras. Or, if he is not inclined to adventure, the valley itself will satisfy his highest imaginative flights of the sublime in rock ma.s.ses and perpendicular ledges, and his sense of beauty in the graceful water-falls, rainbow colors, and exquisite lines of domes and pinnacles. It is in the grouping of objects of sublimity and beauty that the Yosemite excels. The narrow valley, with its gigantic walls, which vary in every change of the point of view, lends itself to the most astonishing scenic effects, and these the photograph has reproduced, so that the world is familiar with the striking features of the valley, and has a tolerably correct idea of the sublimity of some of these features. What the photograph cannot do is to give an impression of the unique grouping, of the majesty, and at times crushing weight upon the mind of the forms and ma.s.ses, of the atmospheric splendor and illusion, and of the total value of such an a.s.semblage of wonders. The level surface of the peaceful, park-like valley has much to do with the impression. The effect of El Capitan, seen across a meadow and rising from a beautiful park, is much greater than if it were encountered in a savage mountain gorge. The traveller may have seen elsewhere greater water-falls, and domes and spires of rock as surprising, but he has nowhere else seen such a combination as this. He may be fortified against surprise by the photographs he has seen and the reports of word painters, but he will not escape (say, at Inspiration Point, or Artist Point, or other lookouts), a quickening of the pulse and an elation which is physical as well as mental, in the sight of such unexpected sublimity and beauty. And familiarity will scarcely take off the edge of his delight, so varied are the effects in the pa.s.sing hours and changing lights. The Rainbow Fall, when water is abundant, is exceedingly impressive as well as beautiful. Seen from the carriage road, pouring out of the sky overhead, it gives a sense of power, and at the proper hour before sunset, when the vast ma.s.s of leaping, foaming water is shot through with the colors of the spectrum, it is one of the most exquisite sights the world can offer; the elemental forces are overwhelming, but the loveliness is engaging. One turns from this to the n.o.ble ma.s.s of El Capitan with a shock of surprise, however often it may have been seen. This is the hour also, in the time of high-water, to see the reflection of the Yosemite Falls. As a spectacle it is infinitely finer than anything at Mirror Lake, and is unique in its way. To behold this beautiful series of falls, flowing down out of the blue sky above, and flowing up out of an equally blue sky in the depths of the earth, is a sight not to be forgotten. And when the observer pa.s.ses from these displays to the sight of the aerial domes in the upper end of the valley, new wonders opening at every turn of the forest road, his excitement has little chance of subsiding: he may be even a little oppressed. The valley, so verdant and friendly with gra.s.s and trees and flowers, is so narrow compared with the height of its perpendicular guardian walls, and this little secluded spot is so imprisoned in the gigantic mountains, that man has a feeling of helplessness in it. This powerlessness in the presence of elemental forces was heightened by the deluge of water. There had been an immense fall of snow the winter before, the Merced was a raging torrent, overflowing its banks, and from every ledge poured a miniature cataract.
[Ill.u.s.tration: COAST OF MONTEREY.]
n.o.ble simplicity is the key-note to the scenery of the Yosemite, and this is enhanced by the park-like appearance of the floor of the valley.
The stems of the fine trees are in harmony with the perpendicular lines, and their foliage adds the necessary contrast to the gray rock ma.s.ses.
In order to preserve these forest-trees, the underbrush, which is liable to make a conflagration in a dry season, should be removed generally, and the view of the great features be left unimpeded. The minor canons and the trails are, of course, left as much as possible to the riot of vegetation. The State Commission, which labors under the disadvantages of getting its supplies from a Legislature that does not appreciate the value of the Yosemite to California, has developed the trails judiciously, and established a model trail service. The Yosemite, it need not be said, is a great attraction to tourists from all parts of the world; it is the interest of the State, therefore, to increase their number by improving the facilities for reaching it, and by resolutely preserving all the surrounding region from ravage.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CYPRESS POINT.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: NEAR SEAL ROCK.]
This is as true of the Mariposa big tree region as of the valley.
Indeed, more care is needed for the trees than for the great chasm, for man cannot permanently injure the distinctive features of the latter, while the destruction of the sequoias will be an irreparable loss to the State and to the world. The _Sequoia gigantea_ differs in leaf, and size and shape of cone, from the great _Sequoia semper virens_ on the coast near Santa Cruz; neither can be spared. The Mariposa trees, scattered along on a mountain ridge 6500 feet above the sea, do not easily obtain their victory, for they are a part of a magnificent forest of other growths, among which the n.o.ble sugar-pine is conspicuous for its enormous size and graceful vigor. The sequoias dominate among splendid rivals only by a magnitude that has no comparison elsewhere in the world. I think no one can antic.i.p.ate the effect that one of these monarchs will have upon him. He has read that a coach and six can drive through one of the trees that is standing; that another is thirty-three feet in diameter, and that its vast stem, 350 feet high, is crowned with a ma.s.s of foliage that seems to brush against the sky. He might be prepared for a tower 100 feet in circ.u.mference, and even 400 feet high, standing upon a level plain; but this living growth is quite another affair. Each tree is an individual, and has a personal character. No man can stand in the presence of one of these giants without a new sense of the age of the world and the insignificant span of one human life; but he is also overpowered by a sense of some gigantic personality. It does not relieve him to think of this as the Methuselah of trees, or to call it by the name of some great poet or captain. The awe the tree inspires is of itself. As one lies and looks up at the enormous bulk, it seems not so much the bulk, so lightly is it carried, as the spirit of the tree--the elastic vigor, the patience, the endurance of storm and change, the confident might, and the soaring, almost contemptuous pride, that overwhelm the puny spectator. It is just because man can measure himself, his littleness, his brevity of existence, with this growth out of the earth, that he is more personally impressed by it than he might be by the mere variation in the contour of the globe which is called a mountain. The imagination makes a plausible effort to comprehend it, and is foiled. No; clearly it is not mere size that impresses one; it is the dignity, the character in the tree, the authority and power of antiquity. Side by side of these venerable forms are young sequoias, great trees themselves, that have only just begun their millennial career--trees that will, if spared, perpetuate to remote ages this race of giants, and in two to four thousand years from now take the place of their great-grandfathers, who are sinking under the weight of years, and one by one measuring their length on the earth.
[Ill.u.s.tration: LAGUNA, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.]
The transition from the sublime to the exquisitely lovely in nature can nowhere else be made with more celerity than from the Sierras to the coast at Monterey; California abounds in such contrasts and surprises.
After the great stirring of the emotions by the Yosemite and the Mariposa, the Hotel del Monte Park and vicinity offer repose, and make an appeal to the sense of beauty and refinement. Yet even here something unique is again encountered. I do not refer to the extraordinary beauty of the giant live-oaks and the landscape-gardening about the hotel, which have made Monterey famous the world over, but to the sea-beach drive of sixteen miles, which can scarcely be rivalled elsewhere either for marine loveliness or variety of coast scenery. It has points like the ocean drive at Newport, but is altogether on a grander scale, and shows a more poetic union of sh.o.r.e and sea; besides, it offers the curious and fascinating spectacles of the rocks inhabited by the sea-lions, and the Cypress Point. These huge, uncouth creatures can be seen elsewhere, but probably nowhere else on this coast are they ma.s.sed in greater numbers. The trees of Cypress Point are unique, this species of cypress having been found nowhere else. The long, never-ceasing swell of the Pacific incessantly flows up the many crescent sand beaches, casting up sh.e.l.ls of brilliant hues, sea-weed, and kelp, which seems instinct with animal life, and flotsam from the far-off islands. But the rocks that lie off the sh.o.r.e, and the jagged points that project in fanciful forms, break the even great swell, and send the waters, churned into spray and foam, into the air with a thousand hues in the sun. The shock of these sharp collisions mingles with the heavy ocean boom.
Cypress Point is one of the most conspicuous of these projections, and its strange trees creep out upon the ragged ledges almost to the water"s edge. These cypresses are quite as instinct with individual life and quite as fantastic as any that Dore drew for his "Inferno." They are as gnarled and twisted as olive-trees two centuries old, but their att.i.tudes seem not only to show struggle with the elements, but agony in that struggle. The agony may be that of torture in the tempest, or of some fabled creatures fleeing and pursued, stretching out their long arms in terror, and fixed in that writhing fear. They are creatures of the sea quite as much as of the land, and they give to this lovely coast a strange charm and fascination.
CHAPTER, XVI.
FASCINATIONS OF THE DESERT.--THE LAGUNA PUEBLO.
The traveller to California by the Santa Fe route comes into the arid regions gradually, and finds each day a variety of objects of interest that upsets his conception of a monotonous desert land. If he chooses to break the continental journey midway, he can turn aside at Las Vegas to the Hot Springs. Here, at the head of a picturesque valley, is the Montezuma Hotel, a luxurious and handsome house, 6767 feet above sea-level, a great surprise in the midst of the broken and somewhat savage New Mexican scenery. The low hills covered with pines and pinons, the romantic glens, and the wide views from the elevations about the hotel, make it an attractive place; and a great deal has been done, in the erection of bath-houses, ornamental gardening, and the grading of roads and walks, to make it a comfortable place. The lat.i.tude and the dryness of the atmosphere insure for the traveller from the North in our winter an agreeable reception, and the elevation makes the spot in the summer a desirable resort from Southern heat. It is a sanitarium as well as a pleasure resort. The Hot Springs have much the same character as the Toplitz waters in Bohemia, and the saturated earth--the _Mutterlager_--furnishes the curative "mud baths" which are enjoyed at Marienbad and Carlsbad. The union of the climate, which is so favorable in diseases of the respiratory organs, with the waters, which do so much for rheumatic sufferers, gives a distinction to Las Vegas Hot Springs.
This New Mexican air--there is none purer on the globe--is an enemy to hay-fever and malarial diseases. It was a wise enterprise to provide that those who wish to try its efficacy can do so at the Montezuma without giving up any of the comforts of civilized life.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH AT LAGUNA.]
It is difficult to explain to one who has not seen it, or will not put himself in the leisurely frame of mind to enjoy it, the charms of the desert of the high plateaus of New Mexico and Arizona. Its arid character is not so impressive as its ancientness; and the part which interests us is not only the procession of the long geologic eras, visible in the extinct volcanoes, the _barrancas_, the painted b.u.t.tes, the petrified forests, but as well in the evidences of civilizations gone by, or the remains of them surviving in our day--the cliff dwellings, the ruins of cities that were thriving when Coronado sent his lieutenants through the region three centuries ago, and the present residences of the Pueblo Indians, either villages perched upon an almost inaccessible rock like Acamo, or cl.u.s.ters of adobe dwellings like Isleta and Laguna. The Pueblo Indians, of whom the Zunis are a tribe, have been dwellers in villages and cultivators of the soil and of the arts of peace immemorially, a gentle, amiable race. It is indeed such a race as one would expect to find in the land of the sun and the cactus. Their manners and their arts attest their antiquity and a long refinement in fixed dwellings and occupations. The whole region is a most interesting field for the antiquarian.
We stopped one day at Laguna, which is on the Santa Fe line west of Isleta, another Indian pueblo at the Atlantic and Pacific junction, where the road crosses the Rio Grande del Norte west of Albuquerque.
Near Laguna a little stream called the Rio Puerco flows southward and joins the Rio Grande. There is verdure along these streams, and gardens and fruit orchards repay the rude irrigation. In spite of these watercourses the aspect of the landscape is wild and desert-like--low barren hills and ragged ledges, wide sweeps of sand and dry gray bushes, with mountains and long lines of horizontal ledges in the distance.
Laguna is built upon a rounded elevation of rock. Its appearance is exactly that of a Syrian village, the same cl.u.s.ter of little, square, flat-roofed houses in terraces, the same brown color, and under the same pale blue sky. And the resemblance was completed by the figures of the women on the roofs, or moving down the slope, erect and supple, carrying on the head a water jar, and holding together by one hand the mantle worn like a Spanish _rebozo_. The village is irregularly built, without much regard to streets or alleys, and it has no special side of entrance or approach. Every side presents a blank wall of adobe, and the entrance seems quite by chance. Yet the way we went over, the smooth slope was worn here and there in channels three or four inches deep, as if by the pa.s.sing feet of many generations. The only semblance of architectural regularity is in the plaza, not perfectly square, upon which some of the houses look, and where the annual dances take place. The houses have the effect of being built in terraces rising one above the other, but it is hard to say exactly what a house is--whether it is anything more than one room. You can reach some of the houses only by aid of a ladder. You enter others from the street. If you will go farther you must climb a ladder which brings you to the roof that is used as the sitting-room or door-yard of the next room. From this room you may still ascend to others, or you may pa.s.s through low and small door-ways to other apartments. It is all haphazard, but exceedingly picturesque. You may find some of the family in every room, or they may be gathered, women and babies, on a roof which is protected by a parapet. At the time of our visit the men were all away at work in their fields. Notwithstanding the houses are only sun-dried bricks, and the village is without water or street commissioners, I was struck by the universal cleanliness.
There was no refuse in the corners or alleys, no odors, and many of the rooms were patterns of neatness. To be sure, an old woman here and there kept her hens in an adjoining apartment above her own, and there was the litter of children and of rather careless house-keeping. But, taken altogether, the town is an example for some more civilized, whose inhabitants wash oftener and dress better than these Indians.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TERRACED HOUSES, PUEBLO OF LAGUNA.]
We were put on friendly terms with the whole settlement through three or four young maidens who had been at the Carlisle school, and spoke English very prettily. They were of the ages of fifteen and sixteen, and some of them had been five years away. They came back, so far as I could learn, gladly to their own people and to the old ways. They had resumed the Indian dress, which is much more becoming to them, as I think they know, than that which had been imposed upon them. I saw no books. They do not read any now, and they appear to be perfectly content with the idle drudgery of their semi-savage condition. In time they will marry in their tribe, and the school episode will be a thing of the past. But not altogether. The pretty Josephine, who was our best cicerone about the place, a girl of lovely eyes and modest mien, showed us with pride her own room, or "house," as she called it, neat as could be, simply furnished with an iron bedstead and snow-white cot, a mirror, chair, and table, and a trunk, and some "advertising" prints on the walls. She said that she was needed at home to cook for her aged mother, and her present ambition was to make money enough by the sale of pottery and curios to buy a cooking stove, so that she could cook more as the whites do. The house-work of the family had mainly fallen upon her; but it was not burdensome, I fancied, and she and the other girls of her age had leisure to go to the station on the arrival of every train, in hope of selling something to the pa.s.sengers, and to sit on the rocks in the sun and dream as maidens do. I fancy it would be better for Josephine and for all the rest if there were no station and no pa.s.sing trains. The elder women were uniformly ugly, but not repulsive like the Mojaves; the place swarmed with children, and the babies, aged women, and pleasing young girls grouped most effectively on the roofs.
The whole community were very complaisant and friendly when we came to know them well, which we did in the course of an hour, and they enjoyed as much as we did the bargaining for pottery. They have for sale a great quant.i.ty of small pieces, fantastic in form and brilliantly colored--toys, in fact; but we found in their houses many beautiful jars of large size and excellent shape, decorated most effectively. The ordinary utensils for cooking and for cooling water are generally pretty in design and painted artistically. Like the ancient Peruvians, they make many vessels in the forms of beasts and birds. Some of the designs of the decoration are highly conventionalized, and others are just in the proper artistic line of the natural--a spray with a bird, or a sunflower on its stalk. The ware is all unglazed, exceedingly light and thin, and baked so hard that it has a metallic sound when struck. Some of the large jars are cla.s.sic in shape, and recall in form and decoration the ancient Cypriote ware, but the colors are commonly brilliant and barbaric. The designs seem to be indigenous, and to betray little Spanish influence. The art displayed in this pottery is indeed wonderful, and, to my eye, much more effective and lastingly pleasing than much of our cultivated decoration. A couple of handsome jars that I bought of an old woman, she a.s.sured me she made and decorated herself; but I saw no ovens there, nor any signs of manufacture, and suppose that most of the ware is made at Acoma.
It did not seem to be a very religious community, although the town has a Catholic church, and I understand that Protestant services are sometimes held in the place. The church is not much frequented, and the only evidence of devotion I encountered was in a woman who wore a large and handsome silver cross, made by the Navajos. When I asked its price, she clasped it to her bosom, with an upward look full of faith and of refusal to part with her religion at any price. The church, which is adobe, and at least two centuries old, is one of the most interesting I have seen anywhere. It is a simple parallelogram, 104 feet long and 21 feet broad, the gable having an opening in which the bells hang. The interior is exceedingly curious, and its decorations are worth reproduction. The floor is of earth, and many of the tribe who were distinguished and died long ago are said to repose under its smooth surface, with nothing to mark their place of sepulture. It has an open timber roof, the beams supported upon carved corbels. The ceiling is made of wooden sticks, about two inches in diameter and some four feet long, painted in alternated colors--red, blue, orange, and black--and so twisted or woven together as to produce the effect of plaited straw, a most novel and agreeable decoration. Over the entrance is a small gallery, the under roof of which is composed of sticks laid in straw pattern and colored. All around the wall runs a most striking dado, an odd, angular pattern, with conventionalized birds at intervals, painted in strong yet _fade_ colors--red, yellow, black, and white. The north wall is without windows; all the light, when the door is closed, comes from two irregular windows, without gla.s.s, high up in the south wall.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GRAND CAnON ON THE COLORADO--VIEW FROM POINT SUBLIME.]
The chancel walls are covered with frescos, and there are several quaint paintings, some of them not very bad in color and drawing. The altar, which is supported at the sides by twisted wooden pillars, carved with a knife, is hung with ancient sheepskins brightly painted. Back of the altar are some archaic wooden images, colored; and over the altar, on the ceiling, are the stars of heaven, and the sun and the moon, each with a face in it. The interior was scrupulously clean and sweet and restful to one coming in from the glare of the sun on the desert. It was evidently little used, and the Indians who accompanied us seemed under no strong impression of its sanct.i.ty; but we liked to linger in it, it was so _bizarre_, so picturesque, and exhibited in its rude decoration so much taste. Two or three small birds flitting about seemed to enjoy the coolness and the subdued light, and were undisturbed by our presence.
These are children of the desert, kin in their condition and the influences that formed them to the sedentary tribes of upper Egypt and Arabia, who pitch their villages upon the rocky eminences, and depend for subsistence upon irrigation and scant pasturage. Their habits are those of the dwellers in an arid land which has little in common with the wilderness--the inhospitable northern wilderness of rain and frost and snow. Rain, to be sure, insures some sort of vegetation in the most forbidding and intractable country, but that does not save the harsh landscape from being unattractive. The high plateaus of New Mexico and Arizona have everything that the rainy wilderness lacks--sunshine, heaven"s own air, immense breadth of horizon, color and infinite beauty of outline, and a warm soil with unlimited possibilities when moistened.
All that these deserts need is water. A fatal want? No. That is simply saying that science can do for this region what it cannot do for the high wilderness of frost--by the transportation of water transform it into gardens of bloom and fields of fruitfulness. The wilderness shall be made to feed the desert.
[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH AT LAGUNA.]
I confess that these deserts in the warm lat.i.tudes fascinate me. Perhaps it is because I perceive in them such a chance for the triumph of the skill of man, seeing how, here and there, his energy has pushed the desert out of his path across the continent. But I fear that I am not so practical. To many the desert in its stony sterility, its desolateness, its unbroken solitude, its fantastic savageness, is either appalling or repulsive. To them it is tiresome and monotonous. The vast plains of Kansas and Nebraska are monotonous even in the agricultural green of summer. Not so to me the desert. It is as changeable in its lights and colors as the ocean. It is even in its general features of sameness never long the same. If you traverse it on foot or on horseback, there is ever some minor novelty. And on the swift train, if you draw down the curtain against the glare, or turn to your book, you are sure to miss something of interest--a deep canon rift in the plain, a turn that gives a wide view glowing in a hundred hues in the sun, a savage gorge with beetling rocks, a solitary b.u.t.te or red truncated pyramid thrust up into the blue sky, a horizontal ledge cutting the horizon line as straight as a ruler for miles, a pointed cliff uplifted sheer from the plain and laid in regular courses of Cyclopean masonry, the battlements of a fort, a terraced castle with towers and esplanade, a great trough of a valley, gray and parched, enclosed by far purple mountains. And then the unlimited freedom of it, its infinite expansion, its air like wine to the senses, the floods of sunshine, the waves of color, the translucent atmosphere that aids the imagination to create in the distance all architectural splendors and realms of peace. It is all like a mirage and a dream. We pa.s.s swiftly, and make a moving panorama of beauty in hues, of strangeness in forms, of sublimity in extent, of overawing and savage antiquity. I would miss none of it. And when we pa.s.s to the accustomed again, to the fields of verdure and the forests and the hills of green, and are limited in view and shut in by that which we love, after all, better than the arid land, I have a great longing to see again the desert, to be a part of its vastness, and to feel once more the freedom and inspiration of its illimitable horizons.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE HEART OF THE DESERT.
There is an arid region lying in Northern Arizona and Southern Utah which has been called the District of the Grand Canon of the Colorado.
The area, roughly estimated, contains from 13,000 to 16,000 square miles--about the size of the State of Maryland. This region, fully described by the explorers and studied by the geologists in the United States service, but little known to even the travelling public, is probably the most interesting territory of its size on the globe. At least it is unique. In attempting to convey an idea of it the writer can be a.s.sisted by no comparison, nor can he appeal in the minds of his readers to any experience of scenery that can apply here. The so-called Grand Canon differs not in degree from all other scenes; it differs in kind.
The Colorado River flows southward through Utah, and crosses the Arizona line below the junction with the San Juan. It continues southward, flowing deep in what is called the Marble Canon, till it is joined by the Little Colorado, coming up from the south-east; it then turns westward in a devious line until it drops straight south, and forms the western boundary of Arizona. The centre of the district mentioned is the westwardly flowing part of the Colorado. South of the river is the Colorado Plateau, at a general elevation of about 7000 feet. North of it the land is higher, and ascends in a series of plateaus, and then terraces, a succession of cliffs like a great stair-way, rising to the high plateaus of Utah. The plateaus, adjoining the river on the north and well marked by north and south dividing lines, or faults, are, naming them from east to west, the Paria, the Kaibab, the Kanab, the Uinkaret, and the Sheavwitz, terminating in a great wall on the west, the Great Wash fault, where the surface of the country drops at once from a general elevation of 6000 feet to from 1300 to 3000 feet above the sea-level--into a desolate and formidable desert.
If the Grand Canon itself did not dwarf everything else, the scenery of these plateaus would be superlative in interest. It is not all desert, nor are the gorges, canons, cliffs, and terraces, which gradually prepare the mind for the comprehension of the Grand Canon, the only wonders of this land of enchantment. These are contrasted with the sylvan scenery of the Kaibab Plateau, its giant forests and parks, and broad meadows decked in the summer with wild flowers in dense ma.s.ses of scarlet, white, purple, and yellow. The Vermilion Cliffs, the Pink Cliffs, the White Cliffs, surpa.s.s in fantastic form and brilliant color anything that the imagination conceives possible in nature, and there are dreamy landscapes quite beyond the most exquisite fancies of Claude and of Turner. The region is full of wonders, of beauties, and sublimities that Sh.e.l.ley"s imaginings do not match in the "Prometheus Unbound," and when it becomes accessible to the tourist it will offer an endless field for the delight of those whose minds can rise to the heights of the sublime and the beautiful. In all imaginative writing or painting the material used is that of human experience, otherwise it could not be understood; even heaven must be described in the terms of an earthly paradise. Human experience has no prototype of this region, and the imagination has never conceived of its forms and colors. It is impossible to convey an adequate idea of it by pen or pencil or brush.
The reader who is familiar with the glowing descriptions in the official reports of Major J. W. Powell, Captain C. E. Dutton, Lieutenant Ives, and others, will not save himself from a shock of surprise when the reality is before him. This paper deals only with a single view in this marvellous region.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GRAND CAnON OF THE COLORADO--VIEW OPPOSITE POINT SUBLIME.]