Coronado proceeded eastward to about the western line of Missouri, and, finding colonisation anywhere in the regions visited out of the question, he returned in 1542 to Mexico, with his entire army excepting a couple of padres.

CHAPTER III

The Grand Canyon—­Character of the Colorado River—­The Water-Gods;
Erosion and Corrosion—­The Natives and their Highways—­The “Green
River Valley” of the Old Trappers—­The Strange Vegetation and Some
Singular Animals.

The stupendous chasm known as the Grand Canyon, discovered by Cardenas in the autumn of 1540, is the most remarkable feature of this extraordinary river, and at the same time is one of the marvels of the world.  Though discovered so long ago that we make friends with the conquistadores when we approach its history, it remained, with the other canyons of the river, a problem for 329 years thereafter, that is, till 1869.  Discovery does not mean knowledge, and knowledge does not mean publicity.  In the case of this gorge, with its immense length and countless tributary chasms, the view Cardenas obtained was akin to a dog’s discovery of the moon.  It has practically been several times re-discovered.  Indeed, each person who first looks into the abyss has a sensation of being a discoverer, for the scene is so weird and lonely and so incomprehensible in its novelty that one feels that it could never have been viewed before.  And it is rather a discovery for each individual, because no amount of verbal or pictorial description can ever fully prepare the spectator for, the sublime reality.  Even when one becomes familiar with the incomparable spectacle it never ceases to astonish.  A recent writer has well said:  “The sublimity of the Pyramids is endurable, but at the rim of the Grand Canyon we feel outdone."* Outdone is exactly the right word.  Nowhere else can man’s insignificance be so burned into his soul as here, where his ingenuity and power count for naught.

* Harriet Monroe, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1902.

Cardenas, after all, was only one of the discoverers.  He was merely the first white man who saw it.  When was it that the first man recoiled from the edge of that then actually unknown masterpiece of the Water-gods, who so persistently plied their tools in the forgotten ages?  He was the real discoverer and he will never be known.  As applied to new countries—­new to our race—­the term “unknown” is relative.  Each fresh explorer considers his the deed that shall permanently be recorded, no matter who has gone before, and the Patties and the Jedediah Smiths are forgotten.  In these later years some who have dared the terrors of the merciless river in the Grand Canyon spoke of it as the “Great Unknown,” forgetting the deed of Powell; and when Lieutenant Wheeler laboriously succeeded in dragging his boats up to the mouth of Diamond Creek, he said:  “Now the exploration is completed.”  He forgot the deed of Powell.  A recent writer mentions the north-western corner of Arizona as a “mysterious wilderness."* He forgot that it was thoroughly explored years ago.  Wilderness it may be, if that means sparsely settled, but mysterious?—­no.  It is all known and on record.