The Grand Cañon of the Colorado | Page 3

mile or
nearly a mile above their sunken, hidden bases, some to a level with
our standpoint, but none higher. And in the inspiring morning light all
are so fresh and rosy-looking that they seem new-born; as if, like the
quick-growing crimson snow-plants of the California woods, they had
just sprung up, hatched by the warm, brooding, motherly weather.
In trying to describe the great pines and sequoias of the Sierra, I have
often thought that if one of those trees could be set by itself in some

city park, its grandeur might there be impressively realized; while in its
home forests, where all magnitudes are great, the weary, satiated
traveler sees none of them truly. It is so with these majestic rock
structures.
Though mere residual masses of the plateau, they are dowered with the
grandeur and repose of mountains, together with the finely chiseled
carving and modeling of man's temples and palaces, and often, to a
considerable extent, with their symmetry. Some, closely observed, look
like ruins; but even these stand plumb and true, and show architectural
forms loaded with lines strictly regular and decorative, and all are
arrayed in colors that storms and time seem only to brighten. They are
not placed in regular rows in line with the river, but "a' through ither,"
as the Scotch say, in lavish, exuberant crowds, as if nature in wildest
extravagance held her bravest structures as common as gravel-piles.
Yonder stands a spiry cathedral nearly five thousand feet in height,
nobly symmetrical, with sheer buttressed walls and arched doors and
windows, as richly finished and decorated with sculptures as the great
rock temples of India or Egypt. Beside it rises a huge castle with arched
gateway, turrets, watch-towers, ramparts, etc., and to right and left
palaces, obelisks, and pyramids fairly fill the gulf, all colossal and all
lavishly painted and carved. Here and there a flat-topped structure may
be seen, or one imperfectly domed; but the prevailing style is ornate
Gothic, with many hints of Egyptian and Indian.
Throughout this vast extent of wild architecture--nature's own capital
city--there seem to be no ordinary dwellings. All look like grand and
important public structures, except perhaps some of the lower pyramids,
broad-based and sharp-pointed, covered with down-flowing talus like
loosely set tents with hollow, sagging sides. The roofs often have
disintegrated rocks heaped and draggled over them, but in the main the
masonry is firm and laid in regular courses, as if done by square and
rule.
Nevertheless they are ever changing: their tops are now a dome, now a
flat table or a spire, as harder or softer strata are reached in their slow
degradation, while the sides, with all their fine moldings, are being

steadily undermined and eaten away. But no essential change in style or
color is thus effected. From century to century they stand the same.
What seems confusion among the rough earthquake-shaken crags
nearest one comes to order as soon as the main plan of the various
structures appears. Every building, however complicated and laden
with ornamental lines, is at one with itself and every one of its
neighbors, for the same characteristic controlling belts of color and
solid strata extend with wonderful constancy for very great distances,
and pass through and give style to thousands of separate structures,
however their smaller characters may vary.
Of all the various kinds of ornamental work displayed,--carving, tracery
on cliff-faces, moldings, arches, pinnacles,--none is more admirably
effective or charms more than the webs of rain-channeled taluses.
Marvelously extensive, without the slightest appearance of waste or
excess, they cover roofs and dome-tops and the base of every cliff, belt
each spire and pyramid and massy, towering temple, and in beautiful
continuous lines go sweeping along the great walls in and out around
all the intricate system of side-cañons, amphitheaters, cirques, and
scallops into which they are sculptured. From one point hundreds of
miles of this fairy embroidery may be traced. It is all so fine and
orderly that it would seem that not only had the clouds and streams
been kept harmoniously busy in the making of it, but that every
raindrop sent like a bullet to a mark had been the subject of a separate
thought, so sure is the outcome of beauty through the stormy centuries.
Surely nowhere else are there illustrations so striking of the natural
beauty of desolation and death, so many of nature's own mountain
buildings wasting in glory of high desert air--going to dust. See how
steadfast in beauty they all are in their going. Look again and again
how the rough, dusty boulders and sand of disintegration from the
upper ledges wreathe in beauty the next and next below with these
wonderful taluses, and how the colors are finer the faster the waste. We
oftentimes see