wall, a mile in height, extending to the right and left as far as the
eye could reach; and since the cliff upon which I was standing was
its counterpart, it seemed to me as if these parallel banks were once
the shore-lines of a vanished sea. Between them lay a vast,
incomparable void, two hundred miles in length, presenting an
unbroken panorama to the east and west until the gaze could follow it
no farther. Try to conceive what these dimensions mean by realizing
that a strip of the State of Massachusetts, thirteen miles in width,
and reaching from Boston to Albany, could be laid as a covering over
this Cañon, from one end to the other; and that if the entire range
of the White Mountains were flung into it, the monstrous pit would
still remain comparatively empty! Even now it is by no means without
contents; for, as I gazed with awe and wonder into its colossal area,
I seemed to be looking down upon a colored relief-map of the mountain
systems of the continent. It is not strictly one cañon, but a
labyrinth of cañons, in many of which the whole Yosemite could be
packed away and lost. Thus one of them, the Marble Cañon, is of
itself more than three thousand feet deep and sixty-six miles long.
In every direction I beheld below me a tangled skein of mountain
ranges, thousands of feet in height, which the Grand Cañon's walls
enclosed, as if it were a huge sarcophagus, holding the skeleton of
an infant world. It is evident, therefore, that all the other cañons
of our globe are, in comparison with this, what pygmies are to a
giant, and that the name Grand Cañon, which is often used to
designate some relatively insignificant ravine, should be in truth
applied only to the stupendous earth-gulf of Arizona.

[Illustration: A SECTION OF THE LABYRINTH.]

[Illustration: MOUNT AYER.]