February 26, 1919
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Transcript of February 26, 1919
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8/9/2019 February 26, 1919
1/3
Septa
14,
8933
courtship of the pran-ie chickens, and th e
imngo m t h its singularnests
Such
groups
are not only adheti cally more
attractive than the ordmarymounted bird
on
a
plain perch, but theyconvey to thebeholder
some idea of the blrd’s habit s and natur al ur-
roundings,
so
th at th e most careless can hard-
ly go away wlthout learnmg something new.
Excellent esamples of this sort of mounting
may beseen
rn
th e Ameri can Museum of Na-
tural
Hlsbory at
Central Park, and in the ri-
tish Museum, Kennngt on; but he restrict ed
space and th e small amount of
money
avail-
able at Washmgton have hitherto prevented
the NationalMuseum from exhndmg
o
birds
the treatment which has been so successfully
applied to he arger mammals. The sublect
of
fish
and 6sheries was so well exempliEed at
Phdadelpha that the result
t
Chicago is some-
thi ng of a disappomtment. Excepti ng for the
fisheries
of
North America, the exhibition is
small and mostly unimportant. The reason is
not far toseek. TheUnltcdStates andCanada
collectively have nothing to learn a t present
from foreigncmmtnes, and no foreign dealers
in
fish products have
ny
reason f or supposing
that theycan gain a foothold m our markets,
excep t for sun dry pecialtles like cod-liver oil.
Consequently the commercial lncentlve
is
lack-
ing, and, apa rt from such conntrles as New
Bouth Wale5 and Japan, which have made an
exhibit as a matter of nat ional pride a nd in
evidence o the stat e of their industries, the
forelgn fisheries are very mperfect ly repre-
though less promine nt than
m 1876,
and the
sented. The Government exhibit good,
prach cal rathe r th an the scientific side of the
Fish
Commission’s work 1s emphasized. The
familiar salt-waterishes
o
he Western isltor,
aquar ia are seful in showmg a good many un-
but the resh-water aquarla havouffered from
virulent attacks f the&hfungu s (Saprolegwia)
and are esssuccessful. This exhlbit, as ahole,
is that f tanks
of
wate r with ish
m
them, and
not aquaria
in
the strict sense of the word,
mh ch Implies
a
balance of c onht ions between
the water plants
nd
the animals,
as
in
a
state
of nature.
Many
of the
State
ef i b i t s show
more or less dilapidated stuffed fishes as
a
parti
of their faunal exhlbit, but Callform a has an
excellent series of models, by Denton’s method,
of her chief economic species. These ar e well
colored andproperly labelled. New South
Wales has a good series of alcoholic fishes in
the same excellent order
as
the rest of her
exhibits The collection shown by apa n is
moremteresting rom the economlc or au-
thropological side than s llust rati ng he
ichthyology of the empire The hell &h-
erie s re almost unrepresented m theEx-
few unlabelled
and poorly preserved shells
position except
by he canned roduct
A
appear in the Bramlian exhibit,
a
few
oys-
ters and pearl shells in thecollections of New
SouthWalesand Mexico, Wisconsin shows
a
pretty series of fresh-water p e d s i n (of
all places) the Mining Buildmg; and
T ~ a n y
has a h e eries of pea rls in the=natural
stat e, beside those worked i n t o ornaments-but
this is about all that s vlsible in thls h e ,
cepting the series of shells contamed in the
Ward exhibit in the nthropologwal Budding.
There are
a
few interestmg mod&
of
fish
traps and wers
n
the collection shown by the
Sultan of Johore
in
the Plaisance, these
oblects belong-under th e liead of Anthropology
rather than thatf Ichthyology.
Entomology is admirably illustrated by the
collections in the Government Building made
by
he Entomological Bureau
of
the Agricul-
tural Department.Probably
no
porbon of
the whole Exposltl?n bette r dlust rate s the c1-
enti6c modern method of prese nting such ma t,
ter s o he public eye The insect is shown
fully labelled in all stages and varieties,
with ts food plant and cocoons, m t h dlus-
trations
of
its ravages when inprious,r bene-
ficial methods of work when useful, supple-
mented by small map howing its geographi-
cal range, andoften, when of economxc impor-
tance, accompamed by enlarged anatomlcal
models Nothing more clear, instructive ,and
ment stationsof
the
several States
rn he Agri-
satisfactorycan be Imagined. The experi-
cultural
Budding
show a collective exhibit
which is very
creditable,
though less efficiently
dlsplayed than that made the Government;
and there are the
usual
mscellaneous collec-
tions of attr act ive butterflies, etc
o
be found
in
many of the State exhlbits and
in
those
shown by foreign governments. W. H.
D
THE MOSTSUBLLME
OF
EARTHLY
SPECTACLES.
Oregon,
1893.
TENhours and aalf after leaving lagstaff,
we reached he Grand CafionSt atlon, which
at
present consists of
a
log-cabin (stored with
bacon, hams, canned goods, and
antidotes
t o
thirst), besldes a number of tents-a large one
for kitchen anddinmg-room, and smallerones
for visitors, each tent havinga board floor and
a
comfortable bed. The tents cost a dollar a
day, and the same
um is
charged for a meal,
whch mll be found
as
good as can be expect-
ed under the circumstances. Through
a
lucky
the Cadon’s
brink were found rightere, where
coincidence,
two of the few
springs on
the scenery
s
at its best. Standlugbeside them
one cannot avoid recalling the sad stones of
men who wanderedalong he edge of th e
Cafion for days
and finally
perished of thirst,
with in sigh t of the inaccessible rive r below,
mockmg themwith hedista nt oar of its
turbulent waters.
n
peakmg of the Wa hn t a6on
I
said tha t
one comes across It unexpectedly and without
same
tr ue of the Grand Caiion. The forest
warning, m the midst of the pine forest. The
grows up to its very edge, and although he
camp is
on y
a hundred yards from the rink
of the colossal abyss, one might ive here a
yearwlthout suspecting Its presence. The
superintendent
o
the camp told
me
a sto ry of
a Chinaman who was brough t there as cook
He saw how people constantly came a nd went,
staymg half a week
or
longer, an d ab he could
not see anything extraordmary about theent
nllage, he finally,
at
the end of
f i s t
week,
asked the w aiter what broughto many people
to such an out-of-the-way place. Tho waiter
promised t o tellhimafter he dishes were
washed; then he took hun
u p
the W-only
a
mmute’s walk from the tent.
A r r i m g
at the
brink, the Chmaman threw
up h s
hands
m
astonishment and awe; he could not fathom
for ?” burst fromhis
lips
Thereafter he dady
the
mystery, nd
the
exclamatlon,
“What
sat here for
an
hour. Yet
no one
needs t o
envyheChinaman
lus surprise:
though yon have read
a
dozen descriptions of
th e Caiion, and seen
a hundred photographs,
your astonishment-I had almost said conster-
nation-wlll not be ess tha n his. I have read
somewhere of t w o Englishmen, one of whoni,
on reachmg thls point, exclam ed, Well, I’ll
be-damned while the other sat down and
wept W e a child. Their emotion was the
they merely had M e re n t ways of expressing
it.
ST
Lessmg intunate6
in
h1s
‘Laokobn’ hat
Homer gives one a more v m d idea of Helen’s
beauw by otmg the d e e t It had on the Tro-
an elders tha n he could have done a leugfhy
enumeration of her charms. I feel mcbned to
follow thls Homeric example, and not attempt
a
description of the GrandCaiion, after notmg
its effect on
the
Chmaman and the English-
men. If you will look at photographs of
different part s of the Cadon, you
mll
under-
stand how ut ter ly hopeless such
a
task must
be. The best and large st photog raphs f these
scones appe ar blur red and wantlng
m
perspec-
tme and details, the reason being tha t the
tances and dimensions are so glgantic , and the
detads
so
inh i te , tha t
o
camera canposslbly
condense hem, un l ss
you
take
one
detail at
a
time
and afterwards enlarge It
as
the
minub?
kodak port raits are ometimes enlarged to life-
size Wh at th e camera cannot do,
it
is useless
for the pen toattempt A fewhintsmay
nevertheless be gwen as to whatvisitors may
expect.
prepared to eep
down between two
dark,
pre-
Many persons,
on arriving at the
brink,
are
cipitous walls, only
a
ew hundred feet apart,
with he Colorado
River
flowmg a mile
or
more below
as
far as
eye
can reach on either
side.
The
Grand Cafion is
no
such thmg,
at
least from
this
point of mew; It
IS
instead a
stupendous abyss, almost circular in appear-
ance, more than welve miles across from
where you stand to thepposlte brink, andex-
tendmg
t o
the ightand eft ndehitely,
of view.
Unlike
theYosemte
Valley,
this
according
to he eleva tion of
your
pomt
huge opening
in
thegroundhas
no
snow
peaks,
C M S , or
domes along
its
sides, but
has a level brink s fa r as eyesight
tends, nor
are
thevertical walls adorned
withwaterfalls, as at he Pose mit eex cept
after
showers. In stea d of having ts moun-
tams and clSs and other arclutectural orna-
ments a long its rim, the Grand Cadon seems
to have
swallowed all
and there they
stand, rismg from the evel of the nver,which
is
almost seslevel,
t o
where you stand, more
than 7 000 feet above the sea. This 1s one of
pects of the
Grand Caiion-that
I t a
conglo-
the un ique the marvellous, the amazing as-
meratlon
of
scenic features such as you
expect to
s
from
a
mountain top, whde here
you k d hem buriedn a big
hole in
the ground,
so
that
you
have t o come
t o
the very brmk s
fore you
see
them.
mens1ons of all the i navld ual fac tors
m
thls
No less
unique and marvellous are the di-
scene, whch dwarf everything the most
rlenced travelle r
can
have beheld before. Ye t
what theeyes show.us of t l u s grandeur is but
a fraction of thereah ty We have no standard
of measurement fo r such cyclopean scenes
if
we should pile the Hudson Rwer pahsades
So much, however, is obvious at a glance that
would add
no
more
t o
tsapparent height than
on
top of t he
precipitous
wall opposlte
us,
they
a
single bn ck would add to the tallest building
m
New
York.
And
N r
Charles Dudley War-
ner &d not exaggerate when he wro te of
the
mountainlyingm theforegroundbelowus, that
“the great
San
FrancEco mountam, mt h Its
snowy crater , which we had passed
on
the way,
might have been set down m the place of this
one, and
it
would have been only onein a mul-
titude of 2uch forms that met the eye which-,
ever way looked”; of the Yosemlte, that,
umped down into thi s dde rne ss f gorges
and mountams,
it
would t,ake
a
who knew
of Its existence
a
long tim e t o k d
t.”
The
river, too, aids
our
magina tion m grasping the
grandeur which
our senses
cannot measure
-
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8/9/2019 February 26, 1919
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53s
aided. Far of
t o the righ t we see two short
streaks of
it
They seem like sections of
a
trout brook, but
we
h o w hat they
re
part of
a big nver, and those who have been on its
bank say hat I t is here
as
rapid andwild as the
Niaga ra whirlpool. These two streaks are all
we see from thls pom t f tho Colorado, which,
for the rest f Its sinuous course, 1s either hid-
den between the Carion mountain s
o r sunk
far
ou t of sigh t m he bowels of the ear th.
Curiously sloping, terraced,and pinnacled
tempted
t o
call them-forwe have
only
to
are these subterranean mountams,
one
feels
imagine a roof ove r the Cafion to convert I t
into the blggest cave in the world Fo rh at e-
l y it IS not a cave, else we should lose the
viem the consta nt changes of aspect
produced by the varymg fluminatx on of sun
and moon, an d the exqulslte eoloreffectswhich
add the touchof beauty to a l l t h i s s ub lmty
The diEerent rock str ata , wluch here reveal the
secrets
of
earth-budd ing, have each thew
own
and layers
lverse
Close by, to your left, IS
a
color-red,
gray,
purpl~sh,
n
streaks
patch of b rillian t red rock, whlchfor all the
world looks like one of the pictu resque beds of
crowded flowers one sees
on
the Callfornia foot-
hills in
spring The purphsh
or
brown colors pre-
vad
in
the upper layers, h le the lower slopes
seem covered mt h.gre en
moss;
but thw
moss is
really a orest of shrubs and trees of respec
able size As he hour of sunset approaches,
a
bluish mi s t or atmosphere, 1s cast over the
whole, and modlfies all he ints o a
more
sombre aspect. The abysmal mountam sto he
left cast their ong shadows, and thei r ummits
the antasti c orms of tcmples and
houses and castles of
a
rac e of glants-pagodas
a n d Walhal las so decephve and complete th at
little is left for the maginationo add t o what
the y s can see.
To the righ t the view is even more varied
and Imposmg, with
more
mountains ismg
- from he Cafion, moredlzz ypahsade walls, and
Beyond
the brink of the CaEon, too, there 1s
the two
k e a h of the river before mentioned.
here a sight which, just before sunset, rme ts
the attenlxon and makes an indehble mpres-
sion. Far
off
in the distance are the faint
ut-
lines
of
the
Navajo Mountain, m the shape of
a watermelon; t o its left, nearer theCafion, a
range of mountains of almost a chalky whlte,
and between this and the
afion
liesa streak f
desert which anyne who &d not know to tho
contr ary mould swear was a large lake, and
wluch gives one a good Idea of w ha t a lake
miragemust be hke After e sun has set,
-these phantoms dsappear, but new rosy hue
is daus ed over everything, lllre the Swm Al-
pme
glow. Wl th he too, disappears a
slght, only a hundred feet t o
your
right, to
I have never seen any reference, b ut
which IS more remarkable than the prone In
the White Mountains, o r any other rock-por-
trat I
have ever seen-the m ag e of
a
long-
bearded old
man
witha most kmdly nd
fed, and theace st rh n pl y resembles Michael
thoughtful expression. Every feature is per-
Angelo’s Moses
No visitor to this region should fall t o place
hmself for a day or two under the guidance
of Mr. John Hance, who has for nine years
made the
Cafion lus
home, and knows every
accessible part of it as well as you b o w your
own house. He has asbestos, copper, and sd-
ve1’
nme+-aty-eighfi m number-in0 various
parts of it, has one cabin
on
the brink, another
pa rt may down, and another by the river,ith
plenty of burros
for
lumself and those who
in-
trust themselves to
his
care; some of these
enimak were born iu he Ca6on and have never
been o u t of it There are nom two
roads
to
the river, and though requiring innmuscles
and a steady head, even ladies have been down
them In winter Hauce makes the bottom
his home, iu
summer
the brink. Do wn there
he has seen butterfies and hzards play about
him in the warm air when a storm bad Just
only a few-stray
flakes of whch
reached the
deposited a thick
layer
of snow on the rim,
bottom. MaJor Powell,on his daring expedi-
tlon down the iver
in
1869,
encountered
a
temperature as high as 115 degrees in t h s
abyss; and on September .13 lSS9 Dr. Mer-
r1am found 80 degrees
at
the bottom, while
at the t op of the
C G o n
Cluck ice formed
on a
bucket of water. ‘(In descending f rom he
plateau level to the bottomf the Cafion,”says
the same writer
iu
a Government publication,
tered quivalent to those
stretching rom
‘‘
a succession of tem pera ture
zones is encoun-
the conlferous
forests of
northern Canada t o
the cactus plains
o
Meslco.” And of the in-
terior
of
the Cafion he says
:
LLI tas ledges, terraces, and mesas, bar ren
crags and grassy slopes, lofty mountains a nd
deep valleys, cool hllsides clad in forests of
tropicallucliets; it has arid tretch es of
balsam f i s , and hot bottoms filled m t h sub-
sand bearmg scattered
growth
of cactus and
yucca, and marshes an d springs ha t never be-
multitude of plants requnm g
a
moisture-laden
come dr y an d ar e hidden by the verdure
01 a
atrnosphcre fo r he r
existence.
Its nlmal
hfe s as sharply varied and contrasted’
If
you
lack tnne
o r
strength
t o
follow Mr
Hance
m t o
this strang e abyss,
you
must not
fad, at any rate to go mth him t o Bissell’s
Point, five miles east of tho camp, or better
SM,mde less, to
a
s o r t of isolated buttress
or rocky projection, whence you see straight
down the abrupt wall and get a much more
vlvld lmpress~onof th e dep th of
the
CaEon than from the point near the camp.
O n
t h s rocky projection a re sh ll seen fragme nts
of pottery an d other end ences thatt was used
by the Indians as a habitation of some sort.
It could hardly have been a fortress, isolated
though
it
for where could the water have
come from in case
of
a siege? Perhaps
it
mas
a
place of “ religi ous” resort- . Hance has
hear d t radh ons f the In&ans bringmg t h er
prisoners t o this hor rible precipice,
them over
it,
to gratdy then love of torture,
and then droppmg them, to be dashed into a
thousand pieccs, hke tho rocks he threw over
by wayof illustration.
Mr. Hance s as proud
of
the Grand Cafion
as if it were hLs own creation, and if he could
write down his experiences, they wouldper haps
make lnterestjng
a
book
as
Mqor Powell’s
long-expected volume on the Cafionm U doubb
less prode
He
rarel y leaves It for more thau
a
fe v days at a time, and then longs for
I t
as
mer and m t e r
it
is
equally
attractive t o hnn
a n exlled Swiss does
f o r
his
avalanches. Sum-
but for visito rs e recommends May and June,
October and November, as th e best months;
for then
all
weather chances are elirmnated,
the
1s
sure to be blue, and ther e usually
brisk breeze Yet midsummer has ts ad-
vantages too especially
m
the cloud phenome-
na
in
the Cafion, m the sand-whrls
spmning
across the adlomin g desert like water-spout,s,
m the sight f ram m the heated n hat never
reaches the parch edground, and the terrific
ram-tor rents that have een compared to vol-
canic ruptions. Oddly enough, wherea5.h
neighbormg Cahfornia the ra m lmost always
falls a t mght, here it rarely comes except m
the daytime. Ye t even m the rainy eason the
am
IS
always
dry,
and meat left exposed to
it
does
not spoil Although heheat by day 1s
[Vol. 57
No.
1472
greater than
m
the tropics, the nights
are usu-
ally comfortable; there arenomosqultoes, and
the arge which are quite troublesome
during he day, vanishmstantly at sunset
Were it not for
these
flies, the Carion camp
wouldbe
a n
excellent sanitarium, except foi;
those whose heart
is
affected by so great an
al-
titud e, causing palpi tabon and oss of sleep
m
be a raf ioad
t o
the
Ca6on an dahotel. If
they
a
prolonged stay
Probably erelong there ll
are
not
built obtrusively, there will be no
harm in hem, for they
wdl
appear like mere
toys a m d nature’s mammoth phenomena. The
lover of dry, bracing
ir
and perfect repose
wdl6 nd this an ideal resort, where sdence 9
never broken except by the arrow-Lke whiz of
a
passmg swallow, or the coomg
of
amorous
tnrtledoves
mmglmg mth
the forest music.
Nowhere 1s man less obtrusive Go a hundred
yards from camp, and youmightwanderabout
for weeks and never encounter human ha b i b
tion.
A
student of t he sublime can profitably
spend a month here He w ~ ll ever get over
the surp rise of gomg
up
that unpromsing hl1
and findmg hnnself suddenly on a mountam-
top, and beneath hun the most subllme of all
earth ly spectacles HENRY T.
VENETIAN PICTURES RE-VIEWED.
VENICE, u ly 28,1893.
AFTER a n absence of fifteen years, I
am
in
Venice agam , ndhave been mdustriously
picture-huntmg for two weeks. Perhaps I
am
now
m a
position t o glve some systemat ic a -
count of
my
impressions of t hepictures of
Venice ; and these Impressions, as those of
a
painter seemg with his
o m eyes
and usjng
such knowledge
as
t raming has ev en hm ,
may not mt ho ut interest for some of the
readers of the
Nahon.
I give them for what
they worth, not supposmg that th ey settle
anythmg, and leave the reader o make hls
own allowances for “per sondequation.”
F u s t of all, then, the earlier men, the Vma,
rin i and hhe rest, and eves Geutlle Bellmi
the much-lauded Carpaccio, may, by
all
but
the
historical
student of
art be
entirely ne-
e u t e r u n g pxture-book,
of lnstorical
glected. Carpaccio’s St Ursula senes
1s an
costumes and documents’’ for ther econs truc
tlon of a past Venice, but the y are
qulte
a rb
less and hildhke m both composition md
dramng, and not very remarkable in color;
and the travellerwho follows
IkIr
Ruskin’s ad-
vice and spends much
time
in reverential
study of them, is likely to lunder his growth In
any eal apprecmtion of wha tpamtmg
The first seriously considerable ar tis t of the
schoolisGlovaum Bellim, and he holdshis own
sam e work, of the somewhat hard and thmly
well. There is no loveher piece of ear ly Renais-
pamted and, han he Frari Madonna, and
the steady, strong growth in breadth nd
tal pieces here, the Madonna, of San Zaccaria
power and
fnln ss
shown
in
his other two cap -
and the
‘‘
G a d s Jerome, Chnstopber, and
gustine ”
of
Sa n Giovamm Crisostomo,1s truly
wonderful The f i s t of
these,
whichcanbe
seen
to advantage only n the l?te afternoon,
when th e westering sun
floods
the church and
hghts up its
dark
corners, I &d not
t r u l y
see
when I was he re before, and th e second I did
not see a t all, and they haveconsiderably mo-
d1fied:my view of
B elh i .
They are noble
works of art and, for the moment, almost
m-
clme one to accept Durer’s
dxt um
tha t Belhm
was, in bis old age, “stiu the best pamter of
them all.” The qualit y of most of the Tltlans
here aids
one
to feel this. But tho ugh Bellini
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