Grand Canyon Problems The exploration of the hitherto untrodden tableland
at the summit of an isolated column in the Great Canyon in Colorado is already raising perplexing problems. One, about which the cables from America have been curiously silent, is why a climb hitherto apparently regarded as imprac- ticable was suddenly achieved at the first attempt ; the rope flatteringly sent for to England can hardly have been the decisive factor. Much more difficult to explain than that is the presence of small animals, chipmunks, mice and the like, and the traces of others, such as deer, in a confined space where no sign of water has been discovered—though the mosquitoes which are harrying the explorers normally depend on water, even more than man does. Man, too, for that matter, has left traces of his occupation of Shiva's Temple in the shape of arrow-heads and other flints. If these relics are in fact what they seem to be the assumption that the column has been isolated for something like too,000 years will have to be drastically revised, unless—what is virtually incredible—it can be conceived that men of the Stone Age, like their successors of 1937, found a means of scaling the column and making a temporary stay there. But the wireless installed on Shiva's Temple has only conveyed to us so far thz. explorers' first cursory impression. Their true contri- bution to scientific knowledge has not begun to be made yet. It may well be considerable.
Previous page
