THE Colorado River is pre-eminently "The River of CaÑons." Formed in eastern Utah by the junction of the Green River, rising in northwest Wyoming, and the Grand, which has its sources in the mountain rim which walls in the Middle Park of the State of Colorado, not a mile of the Colorado River is in the state of Colorado.

About two-fifths of its nearly 2,000 miles, reckoning from the sources of the Green, which is the main stream, flows through caÑons, the series culminating in magnitude and grandeur in the Grand CaÑon of the Colorado in Arizona. In 1875, the Government Printing Office at Washington printed in a finely illustrated quarto volume of 291 pages, under the modest and unpretentious title of "Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, Explored in 1869, 1870, 1871, and 1872 Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution," the fascinating and graphic story of one of the most perilous explorations ever undertaken by man, and one whose origin and successful outcome were due to the scientific enthusiasm, the great endurance, the fertility of resources and the dauntless courage of Maj. J. W. Powell. Few men with two arms would have dared to enter upon, or could successfully have completed the task, and he had left his good right arm on a battle-field of our civil war.

In 1882, the United States Geological Survey, of which Maj. Powell was then director, printed Vol. II of its Monographs, being the "Tertiary History of the Grand CaÑon District, by Capt. C. E. Dutton, U.S.A.," a sumptuous quarto of 264 pages, with maps and splendid illustrations.

These two books are, and must ever remain the great authorities on "The River of CaÑons," and I shall only write briefly of the route to and scenic splendors of the Grand CaÑon.

It is accessible from various points along the Santa Fe Railway, but most easily at present by a stage ride of seventy-three miles, at an elevation above the sea varying from 6,866 to nearly 9,000 feet, from Flagstaff, Arizona—a beautifully situated mountain town at the southern base of the San Francisco Peaks, a cluster of volcanic mountains, the loftiest of which rises nearly 13,000 feet above the sea, and some 6,000 feet above Flagstaff.

At Flagstaff is the famous Lowell Astronomical Observatory, and about it are many points of much interest, especially Walnut Creek CaÑon, with its extensive ruins of the cliff dwellers' houses built midway up the face of the almost vertical cliffs.

The first and last thirds of the stage ride to the CaÑon are through the great Conconino Forest of long leaved pines—much scattered and with no underbrush—but commonly with splendid grass and unnumbered wild flowers covering all the open spaces between them.

The middle third is over a more desert region, but not destitute of grass, and with stunted pines and cedars growing on most of the ridges and hills along the way.

For the past two years there has been little rain and the route last July was much more dusty than when I went over it first in 1895, and deemed it one of the most enjoyable stage rides I had ever taken; but rains late in July made it much pleasanter when I returned in August, this year, for a third visit.

Along the whole seventy-three miles there is no lake, pond, river, creek, brook, rivulet, or rill, no running water except springs at two points many miles apart which have been piped into troughs for stock.

This absence of water over so wide an expanse seems at first wholly incompatible with the splendid forests of stately pines, with some aspens and scrubby oaks interspersed, and the luxuriant grass and innumerable flowers.

They are kept alive by the moisture of the heavy snows of winter, and the coolness of the nights in the warmer months, checking the evaporation, and by occasional rains in summer, mostly in July and August.

We are promised a branch railroad in the near future from the main line of the Santa Fe to the CaÑon.

All previous observations of caÑons fail utterly to give any adequate ideas of the immensity and the splendor of this, "the sublimest spectacle on earth." No narrow crack in the earth's crust is this caÑon, but a vast chasm 217 miles long, from five to twelve miles wide and from 5,000 to 6,000 feet deep, with a great river rolling tumultuously along its bottom, miles away from us as the crow flies, and nearly a mile below us vertically.

As there are very few places where it is possible to climb down to the river, one might perish from thirst while wandering along the brink of this caÑon, and having in plain view at many points one of the greatest rivers of the west coast of America.

It is the only caÑon on earth vast enough to have scores of mountains within it.

It is a double caÑon, i. e. a caÑon within a caÑon.

The outer caÑon is from 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep, and from five to twelve miles wide.

Its general direction is east and west, but the mighty river, which in ancient geologic ages eroded this vast abyss, curved, like all rivers, now this way and now that, so that each wall is recessed in mighty amphitheaters, between which comparatively narrow promontories or points run out from one to six miles into the caÑon.

From the base of the mighty palisade which forms the walls of the outer caÑon stretches a plateau 5, 8, 10, or 12 miles wide, to the equally lofty palisade which forms the opposite wall of the outer caÑon, and somewhere near the middle of this plateau is sunk the inner caÑon, another 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep, with a width at the top varying from one-half to three-fourths of a mile, and in its somber depths rolls the ever turbid Colorado, ceaselessly at its endless labor of cutting down the mountains and sweeping their ruins to the sea.

Scattered all over this plateau are the remains of what were once long promontories like the points on which we now walk or ride far out towards the middle of the caÑon, but which have weathered so that they are now lines of hills and mountains.

Real mountains many of them are, for from their bases on the plateau, 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the bottom of the inner caÑon, they rise 1,500 to 2,500 feet, nearly or quite to the level of the tops of the cliffs bounding the outer caÑon.

Nearly all the length of the caÑon is through sandstones, and limestones, and shales, resplendent with the colors which add so much to the beauty of Rocky Mountain scenery.

The almost uniform horizontality of stratification of these rocks demonstrates that the erosion of the caÑon was little aided or affected by any violent upheavals or disturbances of the rocks.

We see clearly about twenty-five miles each way along the caÑon, and somewhat indistinctly probably another twenty-five or thirty miles each way, and everywhere is the same indescribable splendor of color and of beauty of form.

It is a new "Holy City," and whether viewed from above, by a ride or walk along the edge of the caÑon, or from the multitudinous turns and loops of the trail by which one can descend on horseback to the plateau and ride across to the edge of the inner caÑon, whence a path enables us to safely climb on foot down to the river's edge, everywhere we seem to be gazing on the ruins of cities, palaces, towers, and temples, such as might have been builded by the gnomes and genii of the "Arabian Nights."

Speaking of these weather-sculptured buttes or mountains of bare and splendidly colored rock which stand within the outer caÑon, Dutton says:

"Some of these are gorgeous pagodas, sculptured in the usual fashion, and ending in sharp finials at the summit. Others are the cloister buttes with wing-walls and gables, panels and alcoves. All are quarried out upon a superlative scale of magnitude, and every one of them is a marvel. The great number and intricacy of these objects confuse the senses and do not permit the eye to rest. The mind wanders incessantly from one to another and cannot master the multitude of things crowded at once upon its attention. There are scores of these structures, any one of which, if it could be placed by itself upon some distant plain, would be regarded as one of the great wonders of the world," and of the colors he says:

"The color-effects are rich and wonderful. They are due to the inherent colors of the rocks, modified by the atmosphere. Like any other great series of strata in the Plateau Province, the carboniferous has its own range of characteristic colors, which might serve to distinguish it even if we had no other criterion. The summit strata are pale-gray, with a faint yellowish cast. Beneath them the cross-bedded sandstone appears, showing a mottled surface of pale-pinkish hue. Underneath this member are nearly 1,000 feet of the Lower Aubrey sandstones, displaying an intensely brilliant red, which is somewhat masked by the talus shot down from the gray, cherty limestones at the summit. Beneath the Lower Aubrey is the face of the Red Wall limestone, from 2,000 to 3,000 feet high. It has a strong red tone, but a very peculiar one. Most of the red strata of the west have the brownish or vermilion tones, but these are rather purplish-red, as if the pigment had been treated to a dash of blue. It is not quite certain that this may not arise in part from the intervention of the blue haze, and probably it is rendered more conspicuous by this cause; but, on the whole, the purplish cast seems to be inherent. This is the dominant color-mass of the caÑon, for the expanse of rock surface displayed is more than half in the Red Wall group. It is less brilliant than the fiery-red of the Aubrey sandstones, but is still quite strong and rich. Beneath are the deep-browns of the lower carboniferous.

"The dark iron-black of the horn-blendic schists revealed in the lower gorge makes but little impression upon the boundless expanse of bright colors above."