“SHIVA’S TEMPLE”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23332, 26 October 1937, Page 18

“SHIVA’S TEMPLE”

CLIMBING IN THE GRAND CANYON In the middle of the Grand Canyon, in Colorado, so deep and steep that although thousands of tourists visit it every year, they can never descend to the bottom, there stands a great pillar of rock 7000 ft high. The sheer walls of the rock throw out the fierce reds and purples that have made the Gran* Canyon one of the wonders of the New World. Its top, a mile long and three-quarters of a mile wide, is densely wooded. Generations of men have stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon and looked at this beautiful pillar of rock. To-day they call it “ Shiva’s Temple.” Whatever animals inhabit the miniature jungle on its top have been left untouched in a changing world. They were there 50,000 years before the first man walked upright in America. They have developed in their own way, unaffected by conditions in the rest of the world. Many attempts have been made to climb to the top. All have been beaten by the sheer walls of the rock. Aeroplanes cannot land there because of the thick vegetation. In any case, no aeroplane could fight against the terrific currents of air that constantly sweep up through the canyon. Commercial airliners flying we§t and east give the canyon a wide berth for this reason. The expedition that recently set out and “ achieved the impossible ” had been organised by the American Museum of Natural History. Its leader was Dr Harold Anthony, curator of the mammals in the museum, and two expert mountain climbers, Mr Walter Wood, jun., and his wife. They started from the floor of the canyon. To help them they had a series of air photographs taken from an aeroplane flying high overhead. These, when pieced together, indicated a route by which they climbed to the top. Little enough is known about the canyon itself. It has been formed by constant erosion by the Colorado River, which, winding its way from the territory pf the Navajo Indians in Utah into Arizona, has hewn an immense groove in the sandstone and grit for 282 miles. By measuring (he force of the water, it is estimated that the Grand Canyon is at least 1,000,000 years old. To-day its depth ranges from 5000 ft to 9000 ft. The river from the rim appears like a thin thread. At the steepest places it is entirely invisible. In this way. cutting its way deeper and deeper into the earth, the river has isolated little patches of harder rock such as Shiva's Temple. It is 100,000 years since the streams that ; wind round Shiva’s Temple cut off its inhabitants from the land around. Few people have navigated the Colorado River through the canyon. The first white man to do so. an American named Major John W. Powell, embarked in 1869 in a small rowboat and was lost to the world i for three months, He emerged from the lower end ! with an amazing story of turbulent rapids, thunderstorms which surpassed all description in their fierceness, and a world in which the sky was represented by a thin slit. He sailed between the walls of the canyon, which were so deep that he could sec the stars always night and day, like a , minor looking up from the bottom of ■ a pitshaft. • Since then examination of the different strata of rock which the river has exposed has given the scientists a potted history of this part of the world. Fossilised marine plants have been found in the rock, indicating that long before the river started to form the canyon the sea was there. , Higher up—and nearer the birth of \ Shiva's Temple—have been found the footprints of small animals. All the footprints go in one directionupward. Their size, judging by the prints, was about that of a cat. The explanation of the mystery, and perhaps the : animals themselves, may lie on the ' top of Shiva’s Temple. The three explorers do not hope to i find any of the larger animals. ; What they do hope to discover in this “ lost world ” are smaller creatures