ARCHITECTURAL FORMS IN NATURE. 



67 



considerable time, and I have always remembered them as about the 

 most perfect architectural forms I have seen in all the West. 



Pinnacles and multitudinous other forms were also there, and a 

 close inspection would doubtless have discovered many quite as near 

 perfection as those which attracted us from afar. 



In other places in this same locality huge volcanic masses had 

 been pushed mysteriously, in remote geological time, here and there 

 through the strata of sandstones, and the layers of water-made rocks 

 having been subsequently cut away by the rains, the harder fire-made 

 rocks offering more resistance were left behind in tall spires, towers, 

 and various fantastic shapes. To one of them, revealing from the 

 mountains above it a central mass with wingiike dikes spreading out 

 on each side, the Navajos have applied the name of Tsebetai, " The 

 Stone Bird," and by this name it is now known to all who enter the 

 barren and peculiar country. Gazing down upon it one day from 

 the crest of the Tunicha Plateau, I was instantly impressed by the 



felicity of the Indian title, for there it lay upon 

 the plain exactly like a great buzzard petrified 

 with wings outstretched for flight. 



As a rule, it is not the volcanic rocks that 

 furnish the close images of bird, beast, or build- 

 The sedimentary or water-made rocks yield 

 the greatest number and the closest 

 resemblances. Even in towers and 

 pinnacles the water-made rocks, 

 though softer, come out 

 ahead, frequently sending up 

 their splendid shafts to hun- 

 dreds of feet, or to a full 

 thousand, like the " Captains " 

 in De Chelly Canon, Arizona 

 (Fig. 5). Minarets and spires 

 from one hundred to three 

 or four hundred feet high 

 might be counted by thou- 

 sands in the cliff and canon 

 country. 



In far-away Greenland 

 Dr. Kane came upon the red 

 sandstone, " dreamy semblance of a castle flanked with triple towers, 

 completely isolated and denned," which he named the " Three Broth- 

 ers Turrets " (Fig. 6). Not far from this he found a still more singu- 

 lar and impressive shaft, whose poetical symmetry caused him to name 

 it " Tennyson's Monument " (Fig. 7). This he describes thus: " A 



Fig. 5 — The Captains. 



PTMNS 



