The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1907-11-29
WONDERLAND,

Oar readers will recall that about a
month ago Mr. John T. Mason and wife,
formerly Mrs. Anna Hopkins, of Aber-
deem, started from Hartford in their auto
mobile for a trip across the continent,
and the following interesting letter re-
cites in most attractive style some of
the wonders viewed by them.
Ifvou will spare me a space in your paper
| will endeavor to tell you something
of what | consider one of the greatest
wonders of the world; namely, the grand
canvon of Arizona. | have visited the
petrifed forests of Arizona, with its
several hundred square miles of surface
carpeted with agate chips and dotted
with agate trunks to 10 feet in diane
ter, also the cliff dwellers, a strange race
of Pueblo Indians, some in fertile valleys,
some perched on barren and dizzy cliff
tops; all these and great deal more
which | cannot express, make this a
wonderland without a parallel: vet at
the head of the list stands the grand
CANYON of the Colorado. It's believed to
be the greatest chasm in world and the
most superb. Enough globe trOtters
have seen it to establish that fact. 1t is
a gorge of 217 miles in length, through
which flows the Colorado river at a
depth of 5000 feet below the point of
view At first sight one is impressed by
any detail; you are simply over Whelmed
by the stupendous panorama, 1000
square miles in extent, that lies wholly
beneath the eye; as if you stood upon a
mountain peak instead of the level brink
of fearful chasm in the plateau whose
opposite shore is - miles away. A
labyrinth of huge forms, endless in varie-
ty of design, fretted with ornamental de-
vices, festooned with lace like webs from
the upper cliffs and painted with every
color known to the artist in pure trans
parent tones of marvellous delicacy.
Never was picture more harmonious,
never flower more exquisitely beautiful
The spectacle is so symmetrical and so
completely excludes the outside world it
is with difficulty one can acquire any
notion of its immensely.
There are four trails down the southern
wall of the CANYON. People go down the
trail on mules; for the first two miles it
is sort of Jacobs ladder zigzagging at
an unrelenting pitch. At some places
you have to get off and climb up steep
places while the mules Jump up. At the
end of two miles you come to compare
lively gentle slope some $500 feet below
the rim, that is 70 say, eight times the
height of Bartholdi Statue of Liberty
Looking back from this level the high
picturesque towers that border the rim
shrink to pigInies and seem to crown a
perpendicular wall unattainably far in
the sky. Yet less than half the descent
has been made Now the way grows
gloomy and forboding and the gorges
narrower. Obstacles are encountered in
the form of steep crags past which the
river has found a way, but over which
you must Chamber. After these, come de-
scents which have to be passed by aid of
ropes, the last drop is a forty foot pit by
the side of a pretty cascade. When at
last the bottom is reached one stands
upon a sandy rift confronted by nearly
vertical walls many hundred feet high,
at whose base black torrent pitches in
an onward slide that gives one the sensa-
ton of slipping into an abyss. The
whole scene is forever reminding you OF
mighty towers with balustrades and
arches and columns with LATHE work
and delicate carving. All of these
features are sublime in varied hues of
pink, red, brown, lavender, gray. blue
ana DIaChr III SDIHe liSllS lHC Sdlll OH PFC
walls, in other lights the gray and black
prevails and yet again we see the YER
| million. At times the clouds form in the
canyon below and float off in the upper
air looking like pieces of raw cotton,
until in some great cleft in the canyon
they dissolve, so are lost to view. Not
the most fervid pictures of poets fancy
could transcend the glories there revealed
in the depths of this wonderful cayon
with its inky shadows, pale gildings of
lofty spires and golden splendors of the
sun beating full on facades of red and
yellow making suffusion of rosy light,
blended in reflection from a hundred
tinted walls You stand and wonder
how could Robert lngersoll say there
was no God; surely man could never at
tain to anything as grand as this.
| Mrs. JoHN T. MASON,
| THERMAL, CAL.