sublime reality. Even when one becomes familiar with the incomparable
spectacle it never ceases to astonish. A recent writer has well said:
"The sublimity of the Pyramids is endurable, but at the rim of the
Grand Canyon we feel outdone."* Outdone is exactly the right word.
Nowhere else can man's insignificance be so burned into his soul as
here, where his ingenuity and power count for naught.

* Harriet Monroe, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1902.


Cardenas, after all, was only one of the discoverers. He was merely
the first WHITE man who saw it. When was it that the first MAN
recoiled from the edge of that then actually unknown masterpiece of
the Water-gods, who so persistently plied their tools in the
forgotten ages? He was the real discoverer and he will never be
known. As applied to new countries--new to our race--the term
"unknown" is relative. Each fresh explorer considers his the deed
that shall permanently be recorded, no matter who has gone before,
and the Patties and the Jedediah Smiths are forgotten. In these later
years some who have dared the terrors of the merciless river in the
Grand Canyon spoke of it as the "Great Unknown," forgetting the deed
of Powell; and when Lieutenant Wheeler laboriously succeeded in
dragging his boats up to the mouth of Diamond Creek, he said: "NOW
the exploration is completed." HE forgot the deed of Powell. A recent
writer mentions the north-western corner of Arizona as a "mysterious
wilderness."* He forgot that it was thoroughly explored years ago.
Wilderness it may be, if that means sparsely settled, but
mysterious?--no. It is all known and on record.

* Ray Stannard Baker, Century Magazine, May, 1902.