Major Powell, than whom few men have done more to enlighten the world
concerning the wonders of the Far West, describes the cañon very aptly,
and speaks in a most attractive manner of the countless cañons and
caverns, whirlpools and eddies, brooklets and rivers, fords and
waterfalls, that abound on every side. In his first extended description
of the cañon, he stated that "every river entering it has cut another
cañon; every lateral creek has also cut another cañon; every brook runs
in a cañon; every rill born of a shower and living only in the showers,
has cut for itself a cañon; so that the whole upper portion of the basin
of the Colorado is traversed by a labyrinth of these deep gorges. About
the basin are mountains; within the basin are cañon gorges; the
stretches of land from brink to brink are of naked rock or of drifting
sands, with here and there lines of volcanic cones, and of black scoria
and ashes scattered about."

Of late years thousands of people have been attracted to this great
cañon, although but very few have succeeded in exploring its entire
length. Few, indeed, have been able to pass along the balcony of the
cañon, and to gaze up at the countless wonders of nature, piled one
above the other, apparently up to the very region of the clouds. The
common notion of a cañon, as Captain C. E. Dutton tells us, is that of a
deep, narrow gash in the earth, with nearly vertical walls, like a great
and neatly cut trench. There are hundreds of chasms in the plateau
country which answer very well to this notion. It is, however,
unfortunate that the stupendous passway for the Colorado River through
the Kaibabs was ever called a cañon, for the name identified it with the
baser conception. At places the distance across the chasm to the nearest
point on the summit of the opposite wall is about seven miles. A more
correct statement of the general width would be from eleven to twelve