The Toroweap

Text from "The Physical Geology of the Grand Canyon District" by Capt. Clarence E. Dutton - 1881

DRAWINGS BY WILLIAM HENRY HOLMES

At length we approach the lower end of the Toroweap. The scenery here becomes colossal. Its magnitude is by no means its most impressive feature, but precision of the forms. The dominant idea ever before the mind is the architecture displayed in the profiles. It is hard to realize that this is the work of the blind forces of nature. We feel like mere insects crawling along the street of city flanked with immense temples, or as Lemuel Gulliver might have felt in revisiting the capital of Brobdingnag, and finding it deserted. At the foot of the valley the western wall is nearly 1,500 feet high, the eastern about 2,000, and the interval separating them is about three miles. Suddenly they turn at right angles to right and left, and become the upper wall of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado. The Toroweap now opens into the main passageway of the great chasm. The view, however, is much obstructed. At the foot of the eastern gable is a medley of rocky ledges of red sandstone, while around the base of the western gable are large masses of basalt reaching more than half-way across the valley. In front rises a crater, which is about 600 feet high, seemingly a mere knoll in the midst of this colossal scenery. Beyond it, and five miles distant, rises the palisade which forms the southern upper wall of the chasm, stretching athwart the line of vision interminably in either direction. Its altitude is apparently the same as that of the palisade above us, and its profile is also identical. Climbing among the rocky ledges which lie at the base of the escarpment, we at length obtain a stand-point which enables us to gain a preliminary view of the mighty avenue. To the eastward it stretches in vanishing perspective forty miles or more. Between symmetric walls 2,000 feet high and five miles apart is a plain, which in comparison with its limiting cliffs might be regarded as smooth, but which in reality is diversified by rocky hummocks and basins, and by hillocks where patches of soil give life to scattered cedars and piñons. Of the inner chasm nothing as yet is to be seen. Moving outward into this platform we find its surface to be mostly bare rock, with broad shallow basins etched in them, which hold water after the showers. There are thousands of these pools, and when the showers have passed they gleam and glitter in the sun like innumerable mirrors. As we move outward towards the center of the grand avenue the immensity and beautiful proportions of the walls develop. The vista towards the east lengthens out and vanishes against the blue ramp of the Kaibab, which lies as a cloud upon the horizon. To the west the view is less symmetric and regular, and the eye wanders vaguely among cliffs and buttes of stupendous magnitude, displaying everywhere the profile with which we have become of late familiar. Much of the distance towards the west is obstructed by the crater, but the portions in view bewilder us by the great number of objects presented, and oppress us by their magnitudes. At a distance of about two miles from the base of the northern wall we come suddenly upon the inner chasm. We are not conscious of its proximity until we are within a few yards of it. In less than a minute after we have recognized the crest of the farther wall of this abyss we crane over its terrible brink and gaze upon the waters of the river full 3,000 feet below.

escarpment, we at length obtain a stand-point which enables us to gain a preliminary view of the mighty avenue. To the eastward it stretches in vanishing perspective forty miles or more. Between symmetric walls 2,000 feet high and five miles apart is a plain, which in comparison with its limiting cliffs might be regarded as smooth, but which in reality is diversified by rocky hummocks and basins, and by hillocks where patches of soil give life to scattered cedars and piñons. Of the inner chasm nothing as yet is to be seen. Moving outward into this platform we find its surface to be mostly bare rock, with broad shallow basins etched in them, which hold water after the showers. There are thousands of these pools, and when the showers have passed they gleam and glitter in the sun like innumerable mirrors. As we move outward towards the center of the grand avenue the immensity and beautiful proportions of the walls develop. The vista towards the east lengthens out and vanishes against the blue ramp of the Kaibab, which lies as a cloud upon the horizon. To the west the view is less symmetric and regular, and the eye wanders vaguely among cliffs and buttes of stupendous magnitude, displaying everywhere the profile with which we have become of late familiar. Much of the distance towards the west is obstructed by the crater, but the portions in view bewilder us by the great number of objects presented, and oppress us by their magnitudes. At a distance of about two miles from the base of the northern wall we come suddenly upon the inner chasm. We are not conscious of its proximity until we are within a few yards of it. In less than a minute after we have recognized the crest of the farther wall of this abyss we crane over its terrible brink and gaze upon the waters of the river full 3,000 feet below.

The Grand Canyon at the foot of the Toroweap, looking east. The brink of the Inner Gorge, looking east.

The observer who, unfamiliar with plateau scenery, stands for the first time upon the brink of the inner gorge, is almost sure to view his surroundings with commingled feelings of disappointment and perplexity.

The creations of his own fancy no doubt are clothed with a vague grandeur and beauty, but not with the grandeur and beauty of nature. When the reality is before him the impression bears some analogy to that produced upon the visitor who for the first time enters St. Peter's Church at Rome. He expected to be profoundly awe-struck by the unexampled dimensions, and to feel exalted by the beauty of its proportions and decoration. He forgets that the human mind itself is of small capacity and receives its impressions slowly, by labored processes of comparison. So, too, at the brink of the chasm, there comes at first a feeling of disappointment; it does not seem so grand as we expected Perhaps the first notion of the reality is gained when we look across the abyss to the opposite crest-line. It seems as if a strong, nervous arm could hurl a stone against the opposing wall-face; but in a moment we catch sight of vegetation growing upon the very brink. There are trees in scattered groves which we might at first have mistaken for sage or desert furze. Here at length we have a stadium or standard of comparison which serves for the mind much the same purpose as a man standing at the base of one of the sequoias of the Mariposa grove. And now the real magnitudes begin to unfold themselves, and as the attention is held firmly the mind grows restive under the increasing burden. Every time the eye ranges up or down its face it seems more distant and more vast.

The foot of the Toroweap, looking west.