New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1883-08-01
Awe-1nspiring Grandeur.

Following the Gunnison River through
its wide and beautiful valley in Colora-
do for q few miles, the mountains seem
to close in upon the track, and it enters
one of the grandest gorges in the world,
known as the Black Canyon of the Cum
nison. Here are beautiful cataracts,
the water tumbling down from the
mountain crags into the GunnisOn Riv-
er, over precipices from 1900 to 1000
feet high. In one place it is a dainty
little cascade like the bridal veil at Nj
agara Falls "a slender thread of water
pouring over the rocks in fine spray,
and falling into little basin close to the
track, which makes as beautiful pic
ture as can be seen anywhere.
And what a magnificent stream is the
Gunnison! Its water is clear and cold,
and the dark shadows of the cliffs fall
ing upon it gives tia tint of beautiful
green. Springing from a region white
with eternal SHOWS, like a thread of sill
yer it burrows through the walls of rock
whose pinnacles rise 1000 and 5000
feet high on either side, and is rooted
in by a narrow strip of unsullied blue
sky-so narrow that one standing on the
summit of one cliff could throw stone
across to the summit of the other. Now
the river frets and spunes and throws
its foam, splashing in spray against the
black rocks; again it gurgles and gig
giles in glee, laughs and roars at the tri-
umph of having leaped over NATURES bar
riers; then tumbles headlong over a
mighty rock, and with placid dignity
flows along between the great mountains,
taking few moments rest in it's mad
race to the sea.
For fifty miles we follow the narrow
chasm, stepped in the purple of per-
petual twilight. The solemn walls stand
up for 5000 feet both sides of us, frown-
ing down upon the intruders into their
clustered solitude. For mile or two
they are almost perpendicular, gray
with the antique lichens that countless
summers have gathered upon their pur-
pie fronts; then they are massed in
broken columns standing upon a COM
mon base. Here a solitary pinnacle
scars upward toward the sky like
monstrous cathedral tower; there the
rocks are thrown together helter-skelter
in piles half mile high by some remote
geological commotion, and again they
close together and hug the current Of
the river for unbroken miles, the shad-
ows becoming darker and gloomier. In
places the lodges are hacked and torn,
scared and split into great seams into
which the earth has fallen, and a few
sad and solitary spruce trees cling in a
perilous existence.
Often at a heightwhich the suns rays
can sometimes reach, but the wind is
never still, tiny flower may be seen
smiling with heroic fortitude, and few
feet away in q cleft in the rocks will be
found an eagles nest.
When night approaches, the edges of
the rocks that, standing out against the
sky, can catch the moonbeams, will be
fringed with a silvery phosphorescence.
Looking up one sees the narrow roof of
sky, with fresco of stars; looking down
there is the blackness of darkness i'm
measurable.
An awe inspires one when he thinks
that all this architectural grandeur, all
these mighty chasms which would have
required 100000 men 1000 years to
have excavated, have been wrought by
the simple agencies of water and wind
and dust! These canyons were not made
by volcanic eruptions, the geologists tell
us, but by agencies SO simple as those.
Correspondence Chicago Inter Ocean.