loy one of the well known local trail
makers and guides, like John Bass, and go off up the Canyon on a camping
trip of weeks or months.

Once you reach the rim of the Canyon, you can camp under your own tent
roof and cater your own meals. Or you may go to the big hotel and pay $4
to $15 a day. Or you may get tent quarters at the Bright Angel Camp--$1
a day, and whatever you pay for your meals. Or you may join one of John
Bass' Camps which will cost from $4 up, according to the number of
horses and the size of your party.

First of all, understand what the Grand Canyon is, and what it isn't. We
ordinarily think of a canyon as a narrow cleft or trench in the rocks,
seldom more than a few hundred feet deep and wide, and very seldom more
than a few miles long. The Grand Canyon is nearly as long as from New
York to Canada, as wide as the city of New York is long, and as deep
straight as a plummet as the Canadian Rockies or lesser Alps are high.
In other words, it is 217 miles long, from thirteen to twenty wide, and
has a straight drop a mile deep, or seven miles as the trail zigzags
down. You think of a canyon as a great trench between mountains. This one
is a colossal trench with side canyons going off laterally its full
length, dozens of them to each mile, like ribs along a backbone.
Ordinarily, to climb a 7,000 foot mountain, you have to go up. At the
Grand Canyon, you come to the brink of the sagebrush plain and jump
off--to climb these peaks. Peak after peak, you lose count of them in
the mist of primrose fire and lilac light and purpling shadows. To climb
these peaks, you go down, down 7,000 feet a good deal steeper than the
ordinary stair and in places quite as steep as the Metropolitan Tower
elevator. In fact, if the Metropolitan Tower and the Singer Building and
the Flatiron and Washington's Shaft in the Capital City were piled one
on top of another in a pinnacled pyramid, they would barely reach up
one-seventh of the height of these massive peaks swimming in countless
numbers in the color of the Canyon.

So much for dimensions! Now as to time. If you have only one day, you
can dive in by train in the morning and out by night, and between times
go to Sunrise Point or--if you are a robust walker--down Bright Angel
Trail to the bank of the Colorado River, seven miles. If you have two
days at your disposal, you can drive out to Grand View--fourteen
miles--and overlook the panorama of the Canyon twenty miles in all
d