of the world have ever seen. The man who gazes upon Niagara for the
first time, is astounded at the depth of the gorge as well as at the
force of the water; and he who has seen Niagara can appreciate somewhat
the marvels of the Grand Cañon, when he bears in mind that the great
wonder of the Western World is for miles at a stretch more than fifty
times as deep as the falls and the gorge, generally admitted to be the
most awful scenic grandeur within reach of the ordinary traveler. Nor is
this all. Visitors to Paris who have enjoyed a bird's-eye view of the
gay city from the summit of Eifel Tower, have felt terribly impressed
with its immense altitude, and have been astounded at the effect on the
appearance of living and inanimate objects so far below them. How many
of the Americans who have been thus impressed by French enterprise, have
realized that in their own country there is a natural gorge, at points
of which the distance between the summit and the base is more than five
times as great as the height of the Eifel Tower?"

The Colorado River rises in the Rocky Mountains, crosses the Territories
of Utah and Arizona, and then running between the last named and the
State of California, finally empties its waters into the gulf bearing
the name of the Golden State. For more than two hundred miles of its
course it runs through the gorge known as the Grand Cañon, and hence it
has been a very difficult river to explore. During the Sixteenth
Century, some of the Spanish explorers, to whom this country is indebted
so much for early records and descriptions, crossed the then undeveloped
deserts of the Southwest and discovered the Grand Cañon. Many of the
reports they made of the wonders of the New World read so much like
fairy tales, and seemed so obviously exaggerated, that little credence
was given to them. Hence it was that their estimates concerning the
gorge through which the Rio Colorado Grande flows were treated as
fables, and laughed at rather than believed.