days or hours would be best spent on the promontories nearest the hotel.
Yet a surprising number go down the Bright Angel trail to the brink of
the inner gloomy granite gorge overlooking the river. Deep cañons attract
like high mountains; the deeper they are, the more surely are we drawn
into them. On foot, of course, there is no danger whatever, and, with
ordinary precautions, but little on animals. In comfortable tourist faith,
unthinking, unfearing, down go men, women, and children on whatever is
offered, horse, mule, or burro, as if saying with Jean Paul, "fear nothing
but fear"--not without reason, for these cañon trails down the stairways
of the gods are less dangerous than they seem, less dangerous than home
stairs. The guides are cautious, and so are the experienced, much-enduring
beasts. The scrawniest Rosinantes and wizened-rat mules cling hard to the
rocks endwise or sidewise, like lizards or ants. From terrace to terrace,
climate to climate, down one creeps in sun and shade, through gorge and
gully and grassy ravine, and, after a long scramble on foot, at last
beneath the mighty cliffs one comes to the grand, roaring river.

To the mountaineer the depth of the cañon, from five thousand to six
thousand feet, will not seem so very wonderful, for he has often explored
others that are about as deep. But the most experienced will be awe-struck
but the vast extent of strange, countersunk scenery, the multitude of huge
rock monuments of painted masonry built up in regular courses towering
above, beneath, and round about him. By the Bright Angel trail the last
fifteen hundred feet of the descent to the river has to be made afoot down
the gorge of Indian Garden Creek. Most of the visitors do not like this
part, and are content to stop at the end of the horse-trail and look down
on the dull-brown flood from the edge of the Indian Garden Plateau. By the
new Hance trail, excepting a few daringly steep spots, you can ride all
the way to the river, where there is a good spacious camp-ground in a
mesquit-grove. This trail, built by brave Hance, begins on the highest