Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 140, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 December 1903 — The Grand Can you. [ARTICLE]

The Grand Can you.

. OM»k 4*oMtow a little trtbotwy of the Colorado. I found that every drop splashed on my clothes hardened to a lump of mud and that where the water was bat a foot deep my horse was nearly washed away by Its force. That fact, Roger Pocock says in an article in Pearson’s, told me ttle secret of the Grand canyon. Like the Nile, flie Colorado flows through a desert, but the river of Egypt and muddily over low plains, spreading when it is full Into harmless lakes, whereas this headlong sluice of running sand, launched at the naked rocks, has tlie cutting powers of a huge steel saw. The country has risen perhaps an inch a year, but the torrent, instead of spreading out over the laud, has sawed through the lifting .rocks. The country has risen to a height of 8.000 feet, while still the Colorado flows at the ancient level, only 2,000 feet above the sea. That is the reason of this profound abyss for 600 miles through the very foundations of the world. In all, 36,000,000 cubic miles of solid rock have been ground in this vast mall and hurled into the gulf of California.