Once upon a time I took a great journey in this land to three of the ends of our world and over seven thousand mighty miles.  I saw the grim desert and the high ramparts of the Rocky Mountains.  Three days I flew from the silver beauty of Seattle to the somber whirl of Kansas City.  Three days I flew from the brute might of Chicago to the air of the Angels in California, scented with golden flowers, where the homes of men crouch low and loving on the good, broad earth, as though they were kissing her blossoms.  Three days I flew through the empire of Texas, but all these shall be tales untold, for in all this journey I saw but one thing that lived and will live eternal in my soul,—­the Grand Canon.

It is a sudden void in the bosom of the earth, down to its entrails—­a wound where the dull titanic knife has turned and twisted in the hole, leaving its edges livid, scarred, jagged, and pulsing over the white, and red, and purple of its mighty flesh, while down below—­down, down below, in black and severed vein, boils the dull and sullen flood of the Colorado.

It is awful.  There can be nothing like it.  It is the earth and sky gone stark and raving mad.  The mountains up-twirled, disbodied and inverted, stand on their peaks and throw their bowels to the sky.  Their earth is air; their ether blood-red rock engreened.  You stand upon their roots and fall into their pinnacles, a mighty mile.

Behold this mauve and purple mocking of time and space!  See yonder peak!  No human foot has trod it.  Into that blue shadow only the eye of God has looked.  Listen to the accents of that gorge which mutters:  “Before Abraham was, I am.”  Is yonder wall a hedge of black or is it the rampart between heaven and hell?  I see greens,—­is it moss or giant pines?  I see specks that may be boulders.  Ever the winds sigh and drop into those sun-swept silences.  Ever the gorge lies motionless, unmoved, until I fear.  It is a grim thing, unholy, terrible!  It is human—­some mighty drama unseen, unheard, is playing there its tragedies or mocking comedy, and the laugh of endless years is shrieking onward from peak to peak, unheard, unechoed, and unknown.

One throws a rock into the abyss.  It gives back no sound.  It falls on silence—­the voice of its thunders cannot reach so far.  It is not—­it cannot be a mere, inert, unfeeling, brute fact—­its grandeur is too serene—­its beauty too divine!  It is not red, and blue, and green, but, ah! the shadows and the shades of all the world, glad colorings touched with a hesitant spiritual delicacy.  What does it mean—­what does it mean?  Tell me, black and boiling water!

It is not real.  It is but shadows.  The shading of eternity.  Last night yonder tesselated palace was gloom—­dark, brooding thought and sin, while hither rose the mountains of the sun, golden, blazing, ensanguined.  It was a dream.  This blue and brilliant morning shows all those burning peaks alight, while here, shapeless, mistful, brood the shadowed towers.