eem to spring
up to meet them in hearty salutation, eager to touch them and beg their
blessings. It is just in the midst of these dull midday hours that the
canyon clouds are born.

A good storm cloud full of lightning and rain on its way to its work on
a sunny desert day is a glorious object. Across the canyon, opposite the
hotel, is a little tributary of the Colorado called Bright Angel Creek.
A fountain-cloud still better deserves the name "Angel of the Desert
Wells"--clad in bright plumage, carrying cool shade and living water to
countless animals and plants ready to perish, noble in form and gesture,
seeming able for anything, pouring life-giving, wonder-working floods
from its alabaster fountains, as if some sky-lake had broken. To every
gulch and gorge on its favorite ground is given a passionate torrent,
roaring, replying to the rejoicing lightning--stones, tons in weight,
hurrying away as if frightened, showing something of the way Grand
Canyon work is done. Most of the fertile summer clouds of the canyon
are of this sort, massive, swelling cumuli, growing rapidly, displaying
delicious tones of purple and gray in the hollows of their sun-beaten
houses, showering favored areas of the heated landscape, and vanishing
in an hour or two. Some, busy and thoughtful-looking, glide with
beautiful motion along the middle of the canyon in flocks, turning aside
here and there, lingering as if studying the needs of particular
spots, exploring side canyons, peering into hollows like birds seeding
nest-places, or hovering aloft on outspread wings. They scan all the red
wilderness, dispensing their blessings of cool shadows and rain where
the need is the greatest, refreshing the rocks, their offspring as well
as the vegetation, continuing their sculpture, deepening gorges and
sharpening peaks. Sometimes, blending all together, they weave a ceiling
from rim to rim, perhaps opening a window here and there for sunshine
to stream through, suddenly lighting some palace or temple and making it
flare in the rain as if on fire.

Sometimes, as one sits gazing from a high, jutting promontory, the sky
all clear, showing not the slightest wisp or penciling, a bright band of
cumuli will appear suddenly, coming up the canyon in single file, as if
tracing a well-known trail, passing in review, each in turn darting its
lances and dropping its shower, making a row of little vertical rivers
in the air above the big brown one. Others seem to gr