Part C—a book of especial value to the car-window observer on the Santa

Fe route.

Trains to the Cañon are arranged so that travelers may reach it in the early morning and leave the same evening. In a way this is unfortunate, for it offers a temptation, almost irresistible to an American tourist, to “do” the place in a day and go on to some other sight. Of course no one _can_ do it in a day, but he can do certain things, and he can get a notion of the general scheme. Three days at least would best be planned for, and of course more still would be better. The principal features that should not be missed, may be summed up as follows: A horseback trip down into the Cañon by either Bright Angel Trail or the Hermit Trail; the drive (15 miles the round) over the Hermit Rim road; the auto trip (26 miles the round) to Grand View Point. There are, moreover, several short drives of four or five miles by public coach to vantage points along the rim, costing a dollar or two per passenger; and of course walks innumerable, among which that to Hopi Point, about 2 miles northwest from the railway terminus, is particularly to be recommended for its sunset view of the Cañon. Another pleasant short rim walk is to Yavapai Point, 1½ miles to the eastward. From both these points the view is superb.

The trip down the Bright Angel[80] trail to the river and back is an all day jaunt. To the tenderfoot it is a somewhat harrowing experience to be borne downward at an angle of 45 degrees more or less on the back of a wobbling animal, whose head at times hangs over eternity, and whose only footing is on a narrow shelf scratched out of a precipitous wall of the Cañon. However, as nothing tragical happens, and as there is no escape once you are started on the _descensus Averni_, you soon find enjoyment in the novel trip, zigzagging ever downward through successive geologic ages marked by rock strata in white, red, brown and blue.

Something over half way down there is a grateful let-up, when the trail runs out upon a plateau watered by a musical little brook. This place is known as “The Indian Garden.” It is enclosed on three sides by lofty reddish walls, and here some Havasupai Indians are said to have had in comparatively recent times a village, and to have cultivated the land. Long before them, however, _en el tiempo de cuanto ha_, as the Pueblo story tellers say in poetic Spanish (“in the time of how long ago”), another race must have tilled the same soil, as the near-by cliffs maintain numerous remains of rock dwellings and other evidences of human occupancy. It is a pleasant, flowery, romantic spot, this Indian Garden, in the Cañon’s crimson heart, with its fascinating environment of rock sculpturings that seem the towers, palaces and temples of an enchanted city awaiting the lifting of a spell. At the plateau’s outer edge you have a stupendous view of the colossal gorge and the muddy torrent of the river, leaping and roaring 1300 feet below. You may make the Indian Garden the limit of your descent, or you may continue to the river itself, corkscrewing down among the crevices and rockbound ways and echoes of the inexorable wall until you come out upon a little beach, past which, more terrible than beautiful, the savage torrent thunders and cascades and tears its course to freedom. You will be glad to get into the blessed upper world again, but you would not have missed the experience for a greater cost of clambering.

The Hermit Rim road is a first-class modern highway (so far barred, thank heaven, to automobiles), extending about 7½ miles westward from El Tovar by way of Hopi Point to the Hermit Basin. Part of it passes through beautiful stretches of park-like forest, emerging upon the dizzy brink of the Cañon with magnificent outlooks over chasm and river to distant mountains and cloud-piled sky. If you enjoy walking, it is pleasant to do this trip one way in the public coach and the other afoot by way of Rowe’s Well. The Hermit Rim Road ends at the head of a comparatively new trail to the river, a sort of trail _de luxe_, 4 feet wide and protected by a stone wall very reassuring to the apprehensive. As on the Bright Angel trail, there is a plateau midway. Here a public camp is maintained, where accommodations for an over-night stay may be had. From this camp to the river must be done afoot—an easy grade, it is said, but I cannot speak from personal knowledge. There is a trail connecting the lower portions of Hermit and Bright Angel trails, so that one may go to the river by one route and return by the other. This consumes 3 days ordinarily, and must be taken as a camping trip with its concomitant ups and downs. It is hardly to be recommended to any but the reasonably robust—and good natured!

Grand View Point, 13 miles east of El Tovar—a beautiful drive that may be done by motor car through the Coconino Forest—is the terminus of the old-time stage route from Flagstaff. The view at the point is perhaps the finest of all—quite different from that at El Tovar and more extended: owing to the greater width between the main walls of the Cañon; to the fact that the river here makes a sharp turn to the north; and the further fact that the relative lowness of the eastern wall of the bend opens up a vista towards the desert, which at El Tovar is hidden. The Grand View round trip with a look-around at Grand View Point may be done in half a day from El Tovar, but if one can afford to give a day or two to it, the material is here to be worth the extra time. Here is a hotel to care for you. Particularly of interest is the trail to Moran Point, some half dozen miles to the east, an exquisite outlook and the view point of Thomas Moran’s famous picture of the Cañon which occupies a place in the Capitol at Washington. There is a trail down to the river from Grand View Point, and another by way of Red Cañon, heading a little to the west of Moran Point. A connecting trail at the bottom of the Cañon makes it possible to descend by one trail and return by the other, if one goes prepared to camp by the river. There are, by the way, several varieties of fish in the Colorado, one, the so-called Colorado salmon,[81] being a good table fish, though the catching involves no sport, as it is not gamey.

The Grand Cañon may be visited at any season, though in winter there is often snow upon the rim and upper levels. Usually there is not enough to interfere seriously with reaching the various points of interest; and as one descends into the gorge, one soon passes out of wintry into warmer and still warmer conditions. Even in December some flowers will be blooming in the bottom of the Cañon. July and August constitute the usual summer rainy season, when frequent thunderstorms are to be expected, particularly in the afternoons. They are usually of short duration. The atmospheric effects accompanying and succeeding them are often magnificent.[82]