4
Select the correct answer.
What is the author's thesis?
A.
Св.
Music provides a better description of the Grand Canyon than words or pictures.
The Grand Canyon can only be illustrated through visual elements such as form and color.
It is easier to describe the Grand Canyon than it is to describe the abundant beauties of the
forest
c.
D.
A powerful river runs through the gorges of the lateral canyons that make up the Grand Canyon.
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excerpt adapted from Canyons of the Colorado
by John Wesley Powell
The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be
adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by
speech itself. The resources of the visual arts are taxed
beyond their powers in attempting to portray its
phenomenal beauty. Language and illustration combined
must fail. The elements that unite to make the Grand
Canyon the most sublime spectacle in nature are many
and exceedingly diverse. The giant forms, which result
from the sculpture of tempests through ages too long for
man to compute, are wrought into endless details. To
describe these forms would be a task equal in magnitude
to that of describing the stars in the sky or the abundant
beauties of the forest with its traceries of foliage
presented by oak and pine and poplar, by beech and
linden and hawthorn, by tulip and lily and rose, by fern
and moss and lichen. Besides the elements of form, there
are elements of color. The rainbow is not more replete
with hues. But form and color do not exhaust all the
divine qualities of the Grand Canyon. It is the land of
music. The river thunders in perpetual roar, swelling in
floods of music when the storm rains play upon the rocks,
and fading away in soft and low murmurs when the
infinite blue of the sky is unveiled. With the melody of the
great tide rising and falling, swelling and vanishing
forever, other melodies are heard in the gorges of the
lateral canvnns while the waters nlunde in the ranids
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