The Two Great Canyons: Excerpts From Letters Written on a Western Journey — Text and Context

The Epistolary Frame and Its Effects

The book is explicitly a collection of excerpts from letters written for the Cedar Rapids Republican and Evening Times, addressed to Mrs. N. D. Pope. This origin shapes the voice: Cole writes as a correspondent, not a diarist. He addresses a known reader, which lends a conversational, occasionally wry tone. The letters are dated and place-stamped, creating a clear chronological and geographic spine. Because they were composed for a newspaper audience, Cole often explains local references—for instance, recalling what James Bryce wrote about Bismarck in The American Commonwealth. The reader is positioned as someone receiving dispatches from a journey, not a polished travel book. This format allows Cole to shift between description, anecdote, and editorial comment without the need for transitions.

Observations on Settlement and Commerce

Cole repeatedly measures the West against the promises of its promoters. In Los Angeles, he finds a city “mad” with ambition, where real estate offices offer “rosier views of fruit growing” than the dusty orchards deliver. He notes that the famed orchards are “simply patches of trees in plowed ground, the trees covered with dust as well as with ripening fruit.” The contrast between expectation and actuality is a running theme. At the Grand Canyon, he reflects on the Mojave desert as “perhaps the dreariest area on the American continent,” and observes that “water, the great alchemist, the creator and sustainer of life” dictates where people settle. These observations are grounded in specific details—the price of grapes at six dollars a ton, the lack of natural harbors near Los Angeles—that give the letters a documentary quality.

The Role of Water in the Arid West

Water emerges as a central preoccupation. Crossing the Mojave desert, Cole writes: “It is on this journey that one learns the value of water.” He describes how “a little house, a little garden, and a cow” cluster around any trickle of a stream. The scarcity of water shapes agriculture, settlement, and even the rhetoric of land sales: “in these regions water is everything and even real estate men do not sell land, but water.” This observation recurs in the California sections, where irrigation limits cultivation. Cole’s repeated attention to water—its absence, its control, its economic implications—gives the letters a unifying thread that transcends individual locations. The reader is encouraged to track how this theme develops from the Bad Lands to the Grand Canyon.

Voice and Attitude Toward the West

Cole’s tone is neither boosterish nor dismissive. He admires the scale and energy of the West while noting its hardships. Of the Pacific coast, he writes: “No American can ride down this great Pacific coast line without feelings of pride in the developments of this western country. It is all American, intensely American.” Yet he immediately adds: “the man who has to work for a living finds the conditions no easier here than ‘back east.’” This balanced perspective—pride tempered by realism—characterizes the letters. Cole is willing to puncture hype, as when he observes that California’s climate “makes men lazy,” but he also acknowledges the genuine achievements of settlement. The reader should attend to these shifts in register, which mark Cole as a thoughtful observer rather than a mere tourist.

Because the excerpts are drawn from letters written for a newspaper, the reader should expect a series of discrete vignettes rather than a continuous narrative. Cole’s voice is consistent, but each letter responds to a specific place and moment. Pay attention to the dates and locations: they mark not only geographic progress but also shifts in mood and emphasis. The letters reward a reader who enjoys concrete detail—the price of grapes, the dust on orchard trees, the location of a state house—and who is willing to let the author’s observations accumulate into a portrait of a region in transition.

Sitting with Cyrenus Cole’s letters, I remembered standing at the canyon’s rim myself, the vastness humbling me into silence. He wrote of water’s scarcity, yet the land felt endless. That same paradox lingered when I later read Literary Hearthstones of Dixie — Story, Setting & Ideas—places holding more memory than measure, each one quietly asking you to listen.