7 quotes
In my supposed death I had attained to a glory which I fear my continued life has not fully vindicated.
Canyons of the Colorada (1895)
The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail.
Canyons of the Colorada (1895)
You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths.
Canyons of the Colorada (1895)
Realizing the difficulty of painting in word colors a land so strange, so wonderful, and so vast in its features, in the weakness of my descriptive powers I have sought refuge in graphic illustration.
Canyons of the Colorada (1895)
The exploration was not made for adventure, but purely for scientific purposes, geographic and geologic, and I had no intention of writing an account of it, but only of recording the scientific results.
Canyons of the Colorada (1895)
The mountain slopes...are covered with dense forests of pines and firs. The lakes are often fringed with beautiful aspens, and when the autumn winds come their golden leaves are carried over the landscape in clouds of resplendent sheen.
Canyons of the Colorada (1895)
The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock—cliffs of rock, tables of rock, plateaus of rock, terraces of rock, crags of rock—ten thousand strangely carved forms; rocks everywhere, and no vegetation, no soil, no sand. In long, gentle curves the river winds about these rocks.
Canyons of the Colorada (1895)