part of the rim, eight thousand feet above the sea, a thousand feet higher
than the head of Bright Angel trail, and the descent is a little over six
thousand feet, through a wonderful variety of climate and life. Often late
in the fall, when frosty winds are blowing and snow is flying at one end
of the trail, tender plants are blooming in balmy summer weather at the
other. The trip down and up can be made afoot easily in a day. In this
way one is free to observe the scenery and vegetation, instead of merely
clinging to his animal and watching its steps. But all who have time should
go prepared to camp awhile on the riverbank, to rest and learn something
about the plants and animals and the mighty flood roaring past. In cool,
shady amphitheaters at the head of the trail there are groves of white
silver fir and Douglas spruce, with ferns and saxifrages that recall snowy
mountains; below these, yellow pine, nut-pine, juniper, hop-hornbeam, ash,
maple, holly-leaved berberis, cowania, spiraea, dwarf oak, and other small
shrubs and trees. In dry gulches and on taluses and sun-beaten crags are
sparsely scattered yuccas, cactuses, agave, etc. Where springs gush from
the rocks there are willow thickets, grassy flats, and bright flowery
gardens, and in the hottest recesses the delicate abronia, mesquit, woody
compositae, and arborescent cactuses.

The most striking and characteristic part of this widely varied vegetation
are the cactaceae--strange, leafless, old-fashioned plants with beautiful
flowers and fruit, in every way able and admirable. While grimly defending
themselves with innumerable barbed spears, they offer both food and drink
to man and beast. Their juicy globes and disks and fluted cylindrical
columns are almost the only desert wells that never go dry, and they
always seem to rejoice the more and grow plumper and juicier the hotter
the sunshine and sand. Some are spherical, like rolled-up porcupines,
crouching in rock hollows beneath a mist of gray lances, unmoved by the
wildest winds. Others, standing as erect as bushes and trees or tall