side-canons, gorges, alcoves, cloisters, and amphitheaters of vast sweep and depth, carved in its magnificent walls; the throng of great architectural rocks it contains resembling castles, cathedrals, temples, and palaces, towered and spired and painted, some of them nearly a mile high, yet beneath one’s feet.  All this, however, is less difficult than to give any idea of the impression of wild, primeval beauty and power one receives in merely gazing from its brink.  The view down the gulf of color and over the rim of its wonderful wall, more than any other view I know, leads us to think of our earth as a star with stars swimming in light, every radiant spire pointing the way to the heavens.

But it is impossible to conceive what the canon is, or what impression it makes, from descriptions or pictures, however good.  Naturally it is untellable even to those who have seen something perhaps a little like it on a small scale in this same plateau region.  One’s most extravagant expectations are indefinitely surpassed, though one expect much from what is said of it as “the biggest chasm on earth”—­“so big is it that all other big things,—­Yosemite, the Yellowstone, the Pyramids, Chicago,—­all would be lost if tumbled into it.”  Naturally enough, illustrations as to size are sought for among other canons like or unlike it, with the common result of worse confounding confusion.  The prudent keep silence.  It was once said that the “Grand Canon could put a dozen Yosemites in its vest pocket.”

The justly famous Grand Canon of the Yellowstone is, like the Colorado, gorgeously colored and abruptly countersunk in a plateau, and both are mainly the work of water.  But the Colorado’s canon is more than a thousand times larger, and as a score or two new buildings of ordinary size would not appreciably change the general view of a great city, so hundreds of Yellowstones might be eroded in the sides of the Colorado Canon without noticeably augmenting its size or the richness of its sculpture.  But it is not true that the great Yosemite rocks would be thus lost or hidden.  Nothing of their kind in the world, so far as I know, rivals El Capitan and Tissiack, much less dwarfs or in any way belittles them.  None of the sandstone or limestone precipices of the canon that I have seen or heard of approaches in smooth, flawless strength and grandeur the granite face of El Capitan or the Tenaya side of Cloud’s Rest.  These colossal cliffs, types of permanence, are about three thousand and six thousand feet high; those of the canon that are sheer are about half as high, and are types of fleeting change; while glorious-domed Tissiack, noblest of mountain buildings, far from being overshadowed or lost in this rosy, spiry canon company, would draw every eye, and, in serene majesty, “aboon them a’” she would take her place—­castle, temple, palace, or tower.  Nevertheless a noted writer, comparing the Grand Canon in a general way with the glacial Yosemite, says: