Another remarkable and unexpected feature of the canyon is its look of ordered strength.  Nearly all the lines are lines of greatest strength.  The prevailing profile line everywhere is that shown herewith.  The upright lines represent lines of cyclopean masonry, and the slant is the talus that connects them, covered with a short, sage-colored growth of some kind, and as soft to the eye as the turf of our fields.  The simple, strong structural lines assert themselves everywhere, and give that look of repose and security characteristic of the scene.  The rocky forces always seem to retreat in good order before the onslaught of time; there is neither rout nor confusion; everywhere they present a calm upright front to the foe.  And the fallen from their ranks, where are they?  A cleaner battlefield between the forces of nature one rarely sees.

The weaker portions are, of course, constantly giving way.  The elements incessantly lay siege to these fortresses and take advantage of every flaw or unguarded point, so that what stands has been seven times, yea, seventy times seven times tested, and hence gives the impression of impregnable strength.  The angles and curves, the terraces and foundations, seem to be the work of some master engineer, with only here and there a toppling rock.

I was puzzled to explain to myself the reason of a certain friendly and familiar look which the great abyss had for me.  One sees or feels at a glance that it was not born of the throes and convulsions of nature—­of earthquake shock or volcanic explosion.  It does not suggest the crush of matter and the wreck of worlds.  Clearly it is the work of the more gentle and beneficent forces.  This probably accounts for the friendly look.  Some of the inner slopes and plateaus seemed like familiar ground to me:  I must have played upon them when a school-boy.  Bright Angel Creek, for some inexplicable reason, recalled a favorite trout-stream of my native hills, and the old Cambrian plateau that edges the inner chasm, as we looked down upon it from nearly four thousand feet above, looked like the brown meadow where we played ball in the old school-days, friendly, tender, familiar, in its slopes and terraces, in its tints and basking sunshine, but grand and awe-inspiring in its depths, its huge walls, and its terrific precipices.

The geologists are agreed that the canyon is only of yesterday in geologic time,—­the Middle Tertiary,—­and yet behold the duration of that yesterday as here revealed, probably a million years or more!  We can no more form any conception of such time than we can of the size of the sun or of the distance of the fixed stars.