answer. It fills the soul of all responsive persons with awe. Explain it as
one will, deny it if one will, sensitive souls are filled with awe at its
superb majesty, its splendor, its incomprehensible sublimity. And in these
factors we find the great source of its attractiveness, for, in spite of
the awe and terror it inspires in the hearts of so many at first sight, it
allures, attracts and holds those who have once gazed into its mysterious
depths. Indeed, is it not to its very vastness, mystery, solitude and
awe-inspiring qualities we owe its power over us? The human mind is so
constituted that such qualities generally appeal to it. Hence the
never-ceasing call the Canyon will make to the soul of man, so long as a
susceptible mortal remains on earth.

Its Physical Features. Seen at any time it is bewildering and appalling to
one's untrained senses; but especially in the very early morning, during
the hours of dawn and the slow ascent of the sun, and equally in the very
late afternoon and at sunset, are its most entrancing effects to be
witnessed. At midday, with the sun glaring through into its depths, the
reds and chocolates of the sandstones (which are the predominating colors)
are so strong, and the relieving shadows so few, that it seems
uninteresting. But let one watch it as I did last night, between the hours
of seven and ten, and again this morning from five until eight of the
clock. What revelations of forms, what richness of colors; what
transformations of apparently featureless walls into angles and arches and
recesses and facets and entablatures and friezes and facades. What lighting
up of towers and temples and buttes and minarets and pinnacles and ridges
and peaks and pillars of erosion! What exposures of detached and isolated
mountains of rock, of accompanying gorges and ravines, deep, forbidding,
black and unknown, the depths of which the foot of man has never trod!
Turner never depicted such dazzling scenes, Rembrandt such violent and yet
attractive contrasts. Here everything is massive and dominating. The colors