Book Description

Excerpt from Arizona: Being a Book of Words From Many Pens, About the Grand Canyon of the Grand Canyon of Arizona The following description of the Grand Canyon region is condensed from an article written ten years ago by Mr. C. A. Higgins, and published in pamphlet form by the passenger department of the Santa Fe. Mr. Higgins (who, at the time of his sudden death in 1900, occupied the position of Assistant General Passenger Agent of the A. T. S. F. Ry. in special charge of advertising) knew the Grand Canyon more intimately than most men who have written of it. He had descended all the trails and had camped for weeks in the inner gorge and along the rim. He had visited it with artists, lecturers, explorers and scientists. He had read everything of value written about it. This research, acquaintance and experience took root in a well-trained mind, keen for facts and tenacious of impressions. He was a most lovable man, who appreciated books, music, pictures, poetry and nature. Enjoying such things, he loved the Grand Canyon there is no other word so well expresses the relation. And being a lover, he wrote from the heart. Mr. Higgins also loved the great Southwest, big with historic, scenic and human interest. His grasp of the ancient and modern in Indian life (facilitated by membership in one of the most exclusive Moki secret societies), would ultimately have made him prominent among ethnologists. His painstaking, his direct sympathy, his helpfulness to men of science, were unexampled. He caught the deeper significance of symbol and design; their translation revealed to him the meaning of the past and the purpose of the present among these children of the desert. His researches among the dwellers in the skylight cities of Arizona were as fruitful in practical results as his kindred study of the Grand Canyon. The Colorado is one of the great rivers of North America. Formed in southern Utah by the confluence of the Green and Grand, it intersects the northwestern corner of Arizona, and, becoming the eastern boundary of Nevada and California, flows southward until it reaches tidewater in the Gulf of California, Mexico. It drains a territory of 300,000 square miles, and, traced back to the rise of its principal source, is 2,000 miles long. At two points. Needles and Yuma on the California boundary, it is crossed by a railroad. Elsewhere its course lies far from Caucasian settlements and far from the routes of common travel, in the heart of a vast region fenced on the one hand by arid plains or deep forests and on the other by formidable mountains. The early Spanish explorers first reported it to the civilized world in 1540, two separate expeditions becoming acquainted with the river for a comparatively short distance above its mouth, and another, journeying from the Moki Pueblos northwestward across the desert, obtaining the first view of the Big Canyon, failing in every effort to descend the canyon wall, and spying the river only from afar. Again, in 1776, a Spanish priest traveling southward through Utah struck off from the Virgin River to the southeast and found a practicable crossing at a point that still bears the name "Vado de los Padres." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.