In local parlance the upper edge of the precipice walls that line the Canyon is called the ‘rim.’ We never speak of the ‘edge’ of the Canyon, or the ‘banks’ of the Colorado River.

It is a popular idea that the Canyon is through a country of mountains. This is a mistake. Instead, it cuts through a series of great plateaux, known on the north as the Kaibab, Powell, and Kanab Plateaux, and on the south as the Colorado Plateau. The singularity of this formation is such that one does not discover the existence of this vast waterway, as he journeys northward or southward, until he is on its very brink. Hence, the tremendous and startling surprise that awaits every visitor. The Canyon springs upon him with the leap of a panther, and, suggesting a deserted world, yawns at his feet before he is aware that he is within miles of it. It overwhelms him by its suddenness, and renders him speechless with its grandeur and magnificence.

No reading, no descriptions, no pictures, no warnings can prepare the mind for that one first stupendous, overwhelming impression.

Here are the impressions of a few travellers: —

“Tired as we were, we could not wait. It was only to ascend the little steep, stony slope—three hundred yards—and we should see! Our party were straggling up the hill: two or three had reached the edge. I looked up. The duchess threw up her hands and screamed. We were not fifteen paces behind, but we saw nothing. We took the few steps, and the whole magnificence broke upon us. No one could be prepared for it. The scene is one to strike dumb with awe, or to unstring the nerves; one might stand in silent astonishment, another would burst into tears.

“There are some experiences that cannot be repeated—one’s first view of Rome, one’s first view of Jerusalem. But these emotions are produced by association, by the sudden standing face to face with the scenes most wrought into our whole life and education by tradition and religion. This was without association, as it was without parallel. It was a shock so novel that the mind, dazed, quite failed to comprehend it. All that we could grasp was a vast confusion of amphitheatres and strange architectural forms resplendent with color. The vastness of the view amazed us quite as much as its transcendent beauty.

“We had expected a canyon—two lines of perpendicular walls six thousand feet high, with the ribbon of a river at the bottom; but the reader may dismiss all his notions of a canyon, indeed, of any sort of mountain or gorge scenery with which he is familiar. We had come into a new world. What we saw was not a canyon, or a chasm, or a gorge, but a vast area which is a break in the plateau. From where we stood it was twelve miles across to the opposite walls. We looked up and down for twenty to thirty miles. This great space is filled with gigantic architectural constructions, with amphitheatres, gorges, precipices, walls of masonry, fortresses terraced up to the level of the eye, temples, mountain size, all brilliant with horizontal lines of color—streaks of solid hues a few feet in width, streaks a thousand feet in width—yellows, mingled white and gray, orange, dull red, brown, blue, carmine, green, all blending in the sunlight into one transcendent suffusion of splendor.

Afar off we saw the river in two places, a mere thread, as motionless and smooth as a strip of mirror, only we knew it was a turbid, boiling torrent, six thousand feet below us. Directly opposite the overhanging ledge on which we stood was a mountain, the sloping base of which was ashy gray and bluish; it rose in a series of terraces to a thousand–feet wall of dark red sandstone, receding upward, with ranges of columns and many fantastic sculptures, to a finial row of gigantic opera–glasses six thousand feet above the river. The great San Francisco Mountain, with its snowy crater, which we had passed on the way, might have been set down in the place of this one, and it would have been only one in a multitude of such forms that met the eye whichever way we looked. Indeed, all the vast mountains in this region might be hidden in this canyon.

“Wandering a little away from the group and out of sight, and turning suddenly to the scene from another point of view, I experienced for a moment an indescribable terror of nature, a confusion of mind, a fear to be alone in such a presence. With all this grotesqueness and majesty of form and radiance of color, creation seemed in a whirl. With our education in scenery of a totally different kind, I suppose it would need long acquaintance with this to familiarize one with it to the extent of perfect mental comprehension.”—CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

“Suddenly the awful majesty of the Grand Canyon is revealed to his startled vision. There before him lies the mighty red rift in the earth, the most stupendous gorge within the knowledge of man. The mind is spellbound by the spectacle; the voice is silent; the heart is subdued; the soul turns in profound reverence to the Almighty, whose handiwork is here seen on a colossal scale. No matter how many descriptions of the Grand Canyon may have been previously read by him who sees it for the first time, its profound depths, its colossal heights, its myriad and matchless colors, its brilliant hues, its striking lights and shades, its mighty sinuosities, and its altogether grand ensemble will fill the beholder with a mingled sense of awe, wonder, admiration, and reverence.

“I can well believe that the river took its name, Colorado (red) from the prevailing hue of its walls, rather than from the color of the water, which is not red. It is not a brilliant red, but it certainly is generally of a reddish tinge, owing to its being surcharged with so large a quantity of oxydized sandstone mud.

“Here is a mighty opening in the earth, whose capacity in cubic feet must be measured by some mathematician not yet born upon the earth, for the man does not live who can make the figures. Imagine, if you can, all the armies of all the nations of the earth, marching in solid columns from opposite sides of this appalling gorge to meet each other in battle array, unconscious of the existence of this spot until too late to save themselves from being swallowed up in its abysmal depths; imagine all these vast bodies of men, with all the guns, all the horses—infantry, cavalry, artillery, sappers, miners, and pontoniers—all the transportation trains, and all the impedimenta of an army, together with all the buildings of all the cities of the world—imagine all this vast aggregation of men and material thrown into this immeasurable abyss, and the Grand Canyon would still remain unfilled for its entire length, and the Colorado River would continue to flow unintercepted on its reckless course to the sea. In its measureless, cruel, insatiable maw all would be swallowed up.” — HARRISON GRAY OTIS.

“The first impression is awful (in the true sense of the word). The party seemed to be standing in mid–air, while below, the dark depths were lost in blackness and mystery. They were within a few feet of what seemed to be a great bottomless pit. In the distance rocky peaks could be seen rising out of the vast nowhere. Several of the party were convinced that the wind shook the overhanging rock on which they stood, and consequently all of them beat a hasty retreat.

The next morning a very different scene met the eyes of the early risers. Instead of blackness there were beauty and color of which they had hardly dreamed. The Canyon, at all times majestic and dreamy, spread forth so many hues of purple, red, and yellow softly blended together, that a new feeling of awe swept over the gazers, and they stood speechless. It would almost seem that Nature had accidentally dropped an armful of rainbows, and being so well pleased with the effect, had left them there, to charm our mortal eyes.” — PAULINE CURRAN.

To see women burst into tears and in a tremble of ecstatic fear is a common sight. And to men and women alike impressions of that first glimpse often follow them into the realms of sleep. One lady confessed that “it haunted her in her dreams, and it was only by a fortunate awakening that she escaped going over a twenty–five hundred foot precipice during the night—in her dream.”

Another visitor wrote :—

“There was nothing in the topography of the country, or the general surroundings, to indicate that we were within miles of Nature’s greatest of wonders, until all of a sudden the low–browed forest of cedars vanished from our sight; the stage came suddenly to a halt within six or eight feet of a yawning depth two thousand or more feet to its bottom, and such a panorama as was presented to our view, words cannot describe. Fatigue and gloom were forgotten; the fury of the storm and the merciless beating of the rain were unheeded, and there we sat and gazed awestricken, speechless, at the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. What emotions fill the soul; what thoughts crowd the mind, as the eye conveys its first impress of this most marvellous of all wonders to the brain! One’s powers of articulation are paralyzed. Speech would be useless and language a mockery to attempt to describe one’s emotions. They may, and even in some stout hearts often do, find vent in tears, but after the first ejaculation of surprised delight and admiration, seldom, or never, in words.”

Far more instantaneously than the fairy transformation scenes in a pantomime emerge from the stage darkness the great view is unrolled. In this regard the approach to the Canyon by Bass Camp is immeasurably superior to any other. It is dramatic, awe–inspiring, overpowering. There is no waiting, no walking from hotel to rim. Instantly—more like magic than reality—the scene, which is magical, mystical, ideal, and yet supremely natural, is in full view.

But what is it the spectator really sees that produces such impressions as those recorded above?

An easy question to ask, but far from easy to answer. There are so many factors to the sum of emotions, so many diverse powers working upon the more diverse minds of the diverse seers. Let some of them speak for themselves.

“No poet’s tale of joy or sorrow, love or death, casts its witchery over the picture; these silent mountain peaks and deep, impenetrable canyons are associated with no heroic action, no sublime despair. The Canyon stands out before you in its simple majesty; its wonderful beauty, vast dimensions, and untold ancientness appealing only to your aesthetic sense. All the colors of the rainbow combine to make a panoramic picture, fifty miles long, of vast forms, in which all known styles of human architecture are blended in profuse and chaotic magnificence—Ionic, Corinthian, and Doric pillars, a wilderness of pyramids, towers, and temples, pinnacles, spires, domes, and Egyptian obelisks—a chaos of rock in all conceivable shapes.

“Its chaotic immensity utterly bewilders the senses, and fills the soul to overflowing with awe and admiration for the marvellous achievements of the God of nature. Its matchless sublimity, divine grandeur, infinite beauty, are far beyond the comprehension of the finite mind. Man’s capacities are too limited to fully grasp and appreciate what is here unveiled. The man of letters is appalled as he gazes down into its depths. The artist relapses into despair as he views the numberless cliffs, pinnacles, spires, domes, obelisks, pagodas, and measureless amphitheatres, with all their wealth of coloring, the secret of whose blending is known only to the Creator. The geologist is amazed and delighted as he contemplates his surroundings, and he sees how the Stone Book of Nature has been opened for his delectation.

“Never before has he been permitted to gaze on so much of the physical geology of the earth at one glance. Nowhere else can he find such an elaborate and exhaustive treatise on dynamics as in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. More than six thousand feet of sedimentary formations are plainly visible at a single glance, representing periods of geological time that utterly defy mathematical calculation or human conception.”
— J. C. MARTIN.

“An inferno, swathed in soft celestial fires; a whole chaotic underworld, just emptied of primeval floods and waiting for a new creative word; a boding, terrible thing, unflinchingly real, yet spectral as a dream, eluding all sense of perspective or dimension, outstretching the faculty of measurement, overlapping the confines of definite apprehension. The beholder is at first unimpressed by any detail; he is overwhelmed by the ensemble of a stupendous panorama, a thousand square miles in extent, that lies wholly beneath the eye, as if he stood upon a mountain peak instead of the level brink of a fearful chasm in the plateau whose opposite shore is thirteen miles away. A labyrinth of huge architectural forms, endlessly varied in design, fretted with ornamental devices, festooned with lace–like webs formed of talus from the upper cliffs, and painted with every color known to the palette in pure transparent tones of marvellous delicacy. Never was a picture more harmonious, never flower more exquisitely beautiful. It flashes instant communication of all that architecture, and painting, and music for a thousand years have gropingly striven to express. It is the soul of Michael Angelo and of Beethoven.

“That river channel, the profoundest depth, and actually more than six thousand feet below the point of view, is in seeming a rather insignificant trench, attracting the eye more by reason of its sombre tone and mysterious suggestion than by any appreciable characteristic of a chasm. It is nearly five miles distant in a straight line, and its uppermost rims are three thousand feet beneath the observer, whose measuring capacity is entirely inadequate to the demand made by such magnitudes. One cannot believe the distance to be more than a mile as the crow flies, before descending the wall or attempting some other form of actual measurement. Mere brain knowledge counts for little against the illusion under which the organ of vision is here doomed to labor.

“That red cliff upon your right, darkening from white to gray, yellow and brown as your glance descends, is taller than the Washington Monument. The Auditorium in Chicago would not cover one–half its perpendicular span. Yet it does not greatly impress you. You idly toss a pebble toward it, and are surprised to note how far the missile falls short. Subsequently you learn that the cliff is a good half–mile distant. If you care for an abiding sense of its true proportions, go over to the trail that begins beside its summit, and clamber down to its base and back. You will return some hours later, and with a decided respect for a small Grand Canyon cliff. Relatively it is insignificant; in that sense your first estimate was correct. Were Vulcan to cast it bodily into the chasm directly beneath your feet, it would pass for a boulder, if indeed it were discoverable to the unaided eye. Yet the immediate chasm itself is only the first step of a long terrace that leads down to the innermost gorge and the river.

“Roll a heavy stone to the rim and let it go. It falls sheer the height of a church or an Eiffel Tower, according to your position, and explodes like a bomb on a projecting ledge. If, haply, any considerable fragments remain, they bound onward like elastic balls, leaping in wild parabola from point to point, snapping trees like straws, bursting, crashing, thundering down until they make a last plunge over the brink of a void, and then there comes languidly up the cliff sides a faint, distant roar, and your boulder that had withstood the buffets of centuries, lies scattered as wide as Wycliffe’s ashes, although the final fragment has lodged only a little way, so to speak, below the rim.” — C. A. HlGGINS.

“Here are great mansions, built high and secure upon rock–walled spaces; more temples of the Greek, the Roman, the Egyptian; more modern churches; more villages; more turret–crowned castles; gigantic esplanades upon which might be manoeuvred the armies of the world’s most powerful nations; beetling cliffs that tower up to the blue horizon and bathe their feet in the murky river; great dumps of disintegrated rock like waste from mammoth mines; piles of material stacked up ready to build a hundred Londons; great palisades that in comparison make the palisades of the Hudson as but a baby’s finger mark on the wall. All these one sees and notes as the shadows lengthen from the mountain which sits enwalled in the canyon below him."—UNKNOWN.

“The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is a great innovation in modern ideas of scenery, and in our conceptions of the grandeur, beauty, and power of nature. As with all great innovations, it is not to be comprehended in a day or a week, nor even in a month. It must be dwelt upon and studied, and the study must comprise the slow acquisition of the meaning and spirit of that marvellous scenery which characterizes the Plateau country, and of which the great chasm is the superlative manifestation. The study and slow mastery of the influences of that class of scenery and its full appreciation is a special culture, requiring time, patience, and long familiarity for its consummation.

“The lover of nature, whose perceptions have been trained in the Alps, in Italy, Germany, or New England, in the Appalachians or Cordilleras, in Scotland or Colorado, would enter this strange region with a shock, and dwell there for a time with a sense of oppression, and perhaps with horror. Whatsoever things he had learned to regard as beautiful and noble he would seldom or never see, and whatsoever he might see would appear to him as anything but beautiful and noble. Whatsoever might be bold and striking would at first seem only grotesque. The colors would be the very ones he had learned to shun as tawdry and bizarre. The tones and shades, modest and tender, subdued yet rich, in which his fancy had always taken special delight, would be the ones which are conspicuously absent. But time would bring a gradual change.

“Some day he would suddenly become conscious that outlines which at first seemed harsh and trivial have grace and meaning; that forms which seemed grotesque are full of dignity; that magnitudes which had added enormity to coarseness have become replete with strength and even majesty; that colors which had been esteemed unrefined, immodest, and glaring, are as expressive, tender, changeful, and capacious of effects as any others. Great innovations, whether in art or literature, in science or in nature, seldom take the world by storm. They must be understood before they can be estimated, and must be cultivated before they can be understood.

“It is so with the Grand Canyon. The observer who visits its commanding points with the expectation of experiencing forthwith a rapturous exaltation, an ecstasy arising from the realization of a degree of grandeur and sublimity never felt before, is doomed to disappointment. Supposing him to be but little familiar with plateau scenery, he will be simply bewildered. Must he therefore pronounce it a failure, an overpraised thing? Must he entertain a just resentment towards those who may have raised his expectations too high? The answer is, that subjects which disclose their full power, meaning, and beauty as soon as they are presented to the mind have very little of those qualities to disclose.

“Moreover a visitor to the chasm or to any other famous scene must necessarily come there (for so is the human mind constituted) with a picture of it created by his own imagination. He reaches the spot, the conjured picture vanishes in an instant, and the place of it must be filled anew. Surely no imagination can construct out of its own material any picture having the remotest resemblance to the Grand Canyon. In truth, the first step in attempting a description is to beg the reader to dismiss from his mind, so far as practicable, any preconceived notion of it.”
— C. A. DUTTON.

© 1900 George Wharton James,
appeared in the book In and Around the Grand Canyon:
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in Arizona