The Grand Cañon of the Colorado

The author surveys how expanding rail travel has opened remote landscapes to tourists while often degrading wilderness, then delivers a vivid account of the Colorado River’s immense chasm: abrupt rims, multicolored stratified walls, countless alcoves, side-canyons, and sculpted rock formations that suggest castles and cathedrals. He compares scale and character with other celebrated scenes, highlights the river’s erosive role and the canyon’s vastness and variety, and conveys personal impressions of overwhelming beauty and power that defy pictorial or verbal capture, while noting that some great reaches of nature still remain largely beyond human spoil.