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Page 22
In the side ca�on down which we worked our sublime and toilful way it
was easy to see the work done. Sometimes the fierce torrent would pile
the bottom of a side ca�on with every variety of stone, from the wall a
mile high, into one tremendous heap of conglomerate. The next rush of
waters would tear a channel through this and pour millions of tons into
the main river. For years Boston toiled, in feeble imitation of
Milton's angels, to bring the Milton Hills into the back Bay and South
Boston Flats. Boston made more land than the city originally
contained, but it did not move a teaspoonful compared with these
excavations.
The section traversed that day seemed while we were in it like a mighty
chasm, a world half rent asunder, full of vast sublimities, but the
next day, seen from the rim as a part of the mighty whole, it appeared
comparatively little. One gets new meanings of the words almighty,
eternity, infinity, in the presence of things done that seem to require
them all.
In 1869 Major J. W. Powell, aided by nine men, attempted to pass down
this tumultuous river with four boats specially constructed for the
purpose. In ninety-eight days he had made one thousand miles, much of
it in extremest peril. For weeks there was no possibility of climbing
to the plateau above.
Any great scene in nature is like the woman you fall in love with at
first sight for some pose of head, queenly carriage, auroral flush of
color, penetrative music of voice, or a glance of soul through its
illumined windows. You do not know much about her, but in long years
of heroic endurance of trials, in the great dignity of motherhood, in
the unspeakable comfortings that are scarcely short of godlike, and in
the supernal, ineffable beauty and loveliness that cover it all, you
find a richness and worth of which the most ardent lover never dreamed.
The first sight of the ca�on often brings strong men to their knees in
awe and adoration. The gorge at Niagara is one hundred and fifty feet
deep; it is far short of this, which is six thousand six hundred and
forty. Great is the first impression, but in the longer and closer
acquaintance every sense of beauty is flooded to the utmost.
The next morning I was out before "jocund day stood tiptoe on the
breezy mountain tops." I have seen many sunrises In this world and one
other: I have watched the moon slowly rolling its deep valleys for
weeks into its morning sunlight. I knew what to expect. But nature
always surpasses expectations. The sinuosities of the rim sent back
their various colors. A hundred domes and spires, wind sculptured and
water sculptured, reached up like Memnon to catch the first light of
the sun, and seemed to me to break out into Memnonian music. As the
world rolled the steady light penetrated deeper, shadows diminished,
light spaces broadened and multiplied, till it seemed as if a new
creation were veritably going forward and a new "Let there be light"
had been uttered. I had seen it for the first time the night before in
the mellow light of a nearly full moon, but the sunlight really seemed
to make, in respect to breadth, depth, and definiteness, a new creation.
One peculiar effect I never noticed elsewhere. It is well known that
the blue sky is not blue and there is no sky. Blue is the color of the
atmosphere, and when seen in the miles deep overhead, or condensed in a
jar, it shows its own true color. So, looking into this inconceivable
ca�on, the true color came out most beauteously. There was a
background of red and yellowish rocks. These made the cold blue blush
with warm color. The sapphire was backed with sardonyx, and the bluish
white of the chalcedony was half pellucid to the gold chrysolite behind
it. God was laying the foundation of his perfect city there, and the
light of it seemed fit for the redeemed to walk in, and to have been
made by the luminousness of Him who is light.
One great purpose of this world is its use as significant symbol and
hint of the world to come. The communication of ideas and feelings
there is not by slow, clumsy speech, often misunderstood, originally
made to express low physical wants, but it is by charade, panorama,
parable, and music rolling like the voice of many waters in a storm.
The greatest things and relations of earth are as hintful of greater
things as a bit of float ore in the plains is suggestive of boundless
mines in the upper hills. So the joy of finding one lost lamb in the
wilderness tells of the joy of finding and saving a human soul. One
should never go to any of God's great wonders to see sights, but to
live life; to read in them the figures, symbols, and types of the more
wonderful things in the new heavens and the new earth.
The old Hebrew prophets and poets saw God everywhere in nature. The
floods clap their hands and the hills are joyful together before the
Lord. Miss Proctor, in the Yosemite, caught the same lofty spirit, and
sang:
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