its length, and are due to the succession of rock strata revealed in the canyon walls. At the base, for some 800 ft., there is a complex of crystalline rocks of early geological age, consisting of gneiss, schist, slate and other rocks, greatly plicated and traversed by dikes and granite intrusions. This is an ancient mountain mass, which has been greatly denuded. On it rest a series of durable quartzite beds inclined to the horizontal, forming about 800 ft. more of the lower canyon wall. On this come first 500 ft. of greenish sandstones and then 700 ft. of bedded sandstone and limestone strata, some massive and some thin, which on weathering form a series of alcoves. These beds, like those above, are in nearly horizontal position. Above this comes 1600 ft. of limestone—often a beautiful marble, as in the Marble Canyon, but in the Grand Canyon stained a brilliant red by iron oxide washed from overlying beds. Above this “red wall” are 800 ft. of grey and bright red sandstone beds looking “like vast ribbons of landscape.” At the top of the canyon is 1000 ft. of limestone with gypsum and chert, noted for the pinnacles and towers which denudation has developed. It is these different rock beds, with their various colours, and the differences in the effect of weathering upon them, that give the great variety and grandeur to the canyon scenery. There are towers and turrets, pinnacles and alcoves, cliffs, ledges, crags and moderate talus slopes, each with its characteristic colour and form according to the set of strata in which it lies. The main river has cleft the plateau in a huge gash; innumerable side gorges have cut it to right and left; and weathering has etched out the cliffs and crags and helped to paint it in the gaudy colour bands that stretch before the eye. There is grandeur here and weirdness in abundance, but beauty is lacking. Powell puts the case graphically when he writes: “A wall of homogeneous granite like that in the Yosemite is but a naked wall, whether it be 1000 or 5000 ft. high. Hundreds and thousands of feet mean nothing to the eye when they stand in a meaningless front. A mountain covered by pure snow 10,000 ft. high has but little more effect on the imagination than a mountain of snow 1000 ft. high—it is but more of the same thing; but a façade of seven systems of rock has its sublimity multiplied sevenfold.”
To the ordinary person most of the Grand Canyon is at present inaccessible, for, as Powell states, “a year scarcely suffices to see it all”; and “it is a region more difficult to traverse than the Alps or the Himalayas.” But a part of the canyon is now easily accessible to tourists. A trail leads from the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé railway at Flagstaff, Arizona; and a branch line of the railway extends from Williams, Arizona, to a hotel on the very brink of the canyon. The plateau, which in places bears an open forest, mainly of pine, varies in elevation, but is for the most part a series of fairly level terrace tops with steep faces, with mesas and buttes here and there, and, especially near the huge extinct volcano of San Francisco mountain, with much evidence of former volcanic activity, including numerous cinder cones. The traveller comes abruptly to the edge of the canyon, at whose bottom, over a mile below, is seen the silvery thread of water where the muddy torrent rushes along on its never-ceasing task of sawing its way into the depths of the earth. Opposite rise the highly coloured and terraced slopes of the other canyon wall, whose crest is fully 12 m. distant.
Down by the river are the folded rocks of an ancient mountain system, formed before vertebrate life appeared on the earth, then worn to an almost level condition through untold ages of slow denudation. Slowly, then, the mountains sank beneath the level of the sea, and in the Carboniferous Period—about the time of the formation of the coal-beds—sediments began to bury the ancient mountains. This lasted through other untold ages until the Tertiary Period—through much of the Palaeozoic and all of the Mesozoic time—and a total of from 12,000 to 16,000 ft. of sediments were deposited. Since then erosion has been dominant, and the river has eaten its way down to, and into, the deeply buried mountains, opening the strata for us to read, like the pages of a book. In some parts of the plateau region as much as 30,000 ft. of rock have been stripped away, and over an area of 200,000 sq. m. an average of over 6000 ft. has been removed.
The Grand Canyon was probably discovered by G. L. de Cardenas in 1540, but for 329 years the inaccessibility of the region prevented its exploration. Various people visited parts of it or made reports regarding it; and the Ives Expedition of 1858 contains a report upon the canyon written by Prof. J. S. Newberry. But it was not until 1869 that the first real exploration of the Grand Canyon was made. In that year Major J. W. Powell, with five associates (three left the party in the Grand Canyon), made the complete journey by boat from the junction of the Green and Grand rivers to the lower end of the Grand Canyon. This hazardous journey ranks as one of the most daring and remarkable explorations ever undertaken in North America; and Powell’s descriptions of the expedition are among the most fascinating accounts of travel relating to the continent. Powell made another expedition in 1871, but did not go the whole length of the canyon. The government survey conducted by Lieut. George M. Wheeler also explored parts of the canyon, and C. E. Dutton carried on extensive studies of the canyon and the contiguous plateau region. In 1890 Robert B. Stanton, with six associates, went through the canyon in boats, making a survey to determine the feasibility of building a railway along its base. Two other parties, one in 1896 (Nat. Galloway and William Richmond) the other in 1897 (George F. Flavell and companion), have made the journey through the canyon. So far as there is record these are the only four parties that have ever made the complete journey through the Grand Canyon. It has sometimes been said that James White made the passage of the canyon before Powell did; but this story rests upon no real basis.
For accounts of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado see J. W. Powell, Explorations of the Colorado River of the West and its Tributaries (Washington, 1875); J. W. Powell, Canyons of the Colorado (Meadville, Pa., 1895); F. S. Dellenbaugh, The Romance of the Colorado River (New York, 1902); Capt. C. E. Dutton, Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District, with Atlas (Washington, 1882), being Monograph No. 2, U.S. Geological Survey. See also the excellent topographic map of the Grand Canyon prepared by F. E. Matthes and published by the U.S. Geological Survey. (R. S. T.)
GRAND-DUKE (Fr. grand-duc, Ital. granduca, Ger. Grossherzog),
a title borne by princes ranking between king and duke.
The dignity was first bestowed in 1567 by Pope Pius V. on Duke
Cosimo I. of Florence, his son Francis obtaining the emperor’s
confirmation in 1576; and the predicate “Royal Highness”
was added in 1699. In 1806 Napoleon created his brother-in-law
Joachim Murat, grand-duke of Berg, and in the same year the
title was assumed by the landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, the
elector of Baden, and the new ruler of the secularized bishopric
of Würzburg (formerly Ferdinand III., grand-duke of Tuscany)
on joining the Confederation of the Rhine. At the present time,
according to the decision of the Congress of Vienna, the title is
borne by the sovereigns of Luxemburg, Saxe-Weimar (grand-duke
of Saxony), Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz,
and Oldenburg (since 1829), as well as by those of Hesse-Darmstadt
and Baden. The emperor of Austria includes among his
titles those of grand-duke of Cracow and Tuscany, and the king
of Prussia those of grand-duke of the Lower Rhine and Posen.
The title is also retained by the dispossessed Habsburg-Lorraine
dynasty of Tuscany.
Grand-duke is also the conventional English equivalent of the Russian velíkiy knyaz, more properly “grand-prince” (Ger. Grossfürst), at one time the title of the rulers of Russia, who, as the eldest born of the house of Rurik, exercised overlordship over the udyelniye knyazi or local princes. On the partition of the inheritance of Rurik, the eldest of each branch assumed the title of grand-prince. Under the domination of the Golden Horde the right to bestow the title velíkiy knyaz was reserved by the Tatar Khan, who gave it to the prince of Moskow. In Lithuania this title also symbolized a similar overlordship, and it passed to the kings of Poland on the union of Lithuania with the Polish republic. The style of the emperor of Russia now
