radually settled lower, embracing
them all with ineffable kindness and gentleness of touch, and fondled the
little cedars and pines as they quivered eagerly in the wind like young
birds begging their mothers to feed them. The first flakes and crystals
began to fly about noon, sweeping straight up the middle of the canon, and
swirling in magnificent eddies along the sides. Gradually the hearty swarms
closed their ranks, and all the canon was lost in gray gloom except a short
section of the wall and a few trees beside us, which looked glad with snow
in their needles and about their feet as they leaned out over the gulf.
Suddenly the storm opened with magical effect to the north over the canon
of Bright Angel Creek, inclosing a sunlit mass of the canon architecture,
spanned by great white concentric arches of cloud like the bows of a
silvery aurora. Above these and a little back of them was a series of
upboiling purple clouds, and high above all, in the background, a range
of noble cumuli towered aloft like snow-laden mountains, their pure pearl
bosses flooded with sunshine. The whole noble picture, calmly glowing, was
framed in thick gray gloom, which soon closed over it; and the storm went
on, opening and closing until night covered all.

Two days later, when we were on a jutting point about eighteen miles east
of Bright Angel and one thousand feet higher, we enjoyed another storm of
equal glory as to cloud effects, though only a few inches of snow fell.
Before the storm began we had a magnificent view of this grander upper
part of the canon and also of the Cocanini Forest and Painted Desert.
The march of the clouds with their storm-banners flying over this sublime
landscape was unspeakably glorious, and so also was the breaking up of
the storm next morning--the mingling of silver-capped rock, sunshine,
and cloud.

Most tourists make out to be in a hurry even here; therefore their few
days or hours would be best spent on the promontories nearest the hotel.
Yet a surprising number go down the Bright Angel trail to the brink of
the inner gloomy granite gorge overlooking the river. Deep canons attract
like high mountains; the deeper they are, the more surely are we drawn
into them. On foot, of course, there is no danger whatever, and, with
ordinary precautions, but little on animals. In comfortable tourist faith,
unthinking, unfearing, down go men, women, and children on whatever is
offered, horse, mule, or burro, as if say