ock there were great irregular black shadows
under the domes and peaks and escarpments. Bright Angel Canyon was all
dark, showing dimly its ragged lines. At noon there were no shadows and
all the colossal gorge lay glaring under the sun. In the evening Carley
watched the Canyon as again the sun was setting.

Deep dark-blue shadows, like purple sails of immense ships, in wonderful
contrast with the bright sunlit slopes, grew and rose toward the east,
down the canyons and up the walls that faced the west. For a long
while there was no red color, and the first indication of it was a dull
bronze. Carley looked down into the void, at the sailing birds, at the
precipitous slopes, and the dwarf spruces and the weathered old yellow
cliffs. When she looked up again the shadows out there were no longer
dark. They were clear. The slopes and depths and ribs of rock could be
seen through them. Then the tips of the highest peaks and domes turned
bright red. Far to the east she discerned a strange shadow, slowly
turning purple. One instant it grew vivid, then began to fade. Soon
after that all the colors darkened and slowly the pale gray stole over
all.

At night Carley gazed over and into the black void. But for the awful
sense of depth she would not have known the Canyon to be there. A
soundless movement of wind passed under her. The chasm seemed a grave
of silence. It was as mysterious as the stars and as aloof and as
inevitable. It had held her senses of beauty and proportion in abeyance.

At another sunrise the crown of the rim, a broad belt of bare rock,
turned pale gold under its fringed dark line of pines. The tips of the
peak gleamed opal. There was no sunrise red, no fire. The light in the
east was a pale gold under a steely green-blue sky. All the abyss of
the Canyon was soft, gray, transparent, and the belt of gold
broadened downward, making shadows on the west slopes of the mesas and
escarpments. Far down in the shadows she discerned the river, yellow,
turgid, palely gleaming. By straining her ears Carley heard a low dull
roar as of distant storm. She stood fearfully at the extreme edge of a
stupendous cliff, where it sheered dark and forbidding, down and down,
into what seemed red and boundless depths of Hades. She saw gold spots
of sunlight on the dark shadows, proving that somewhere, impossible
to discover, the sun was shining through wind-worn holes in the sharp
ridges. Every instant Carley grasped a different effec