THE GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9368, 18 May 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO.

I bkhevb 110 parallel can be found on the face of the globe to the Grand Canon of the Colorado River in the State of Arizona, a region rarely visited by the traveller, and almost unknown to Englishmen. This astonishing cleft in the surfaco of the earth runs for 220 miles through an elevated mountain plateau, in which it cuts a deep serpentine gash from .'>ooo to 6000 feet deep, the average height of the mountain walls being 5000 feet, or a perpendicular mile. At the bottom of this appalling gorge is no smiling valley or wooded glade ; nothing but a great river surging angrily along a rocky bed and chafing wit h eternal thunder against its prison walls. But once has the passage of that terrible defile from end to end been accomplished. The story is contained in a Parliamentary paper, bub it reads like some weird romance. The spectator from above sees nothing but what might be a silken skein twisted along the bottom of the abyss ; his car, if strained, hardly catches a 'dim and fretful murmur. Hut below is the everlasting roar of waters, and from there the canopy of sky upheld by the pillared walls looks unutterably remote. I know of nothing in the world at all comparable to this. The canons of the Vosemito and the Yellowstone are great; but a greater than either is here. —'J cargo N. Curzon, M.l\