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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Fig 8. — Temples or the Virgin. 



many miles their exquisite color and massive columnar facades crown 

 the high country ten thousand feet or more above the sea, visible 

 far to southward, and with the underlying Gray Cliffs and the still 

 lower down Vermilion Cliffs (which find their beginning in Glen 

 Canon of the Colorado, and trace their serpentine line leagues to 



the west to meet the 

 Temples of the Virgin) 

 form one of the most 

 magnificent panoramas 

 to be found anywhere in 

 the world. Detached 

 and isolated portions of 

 these Pink Cliffs, sur- 

 rounded by the upper 

 members of the Gray, 

 produce sometimes novel 

 effects. I recall one sunny morning when I found myself suddenly 

 in a silent grassy glade, green and gray all round, with before me 

 what can be likened only to an immense pipe organ, its delicate pink 

 columnar pipes standing full two hundred feet high against a somber 

 background of pines where ^Eolus could be heard sighing for the lost 

 chord. 



Major Dutton, in his Geology of the High Plateaus of Utah, 

 says of these Pink Cliffs : " The resemblances to strict architectural 

 forms are often startling. The upper tier of the vast amphitheater 

 is one mighty ruined colonnade. Standing obelisks, prostrate col- 

 umns, shattered capitals, panels, niches, buttresses, repetitions of 

 symmetrical forms, all bring vividly before the mind suggestions of 

 the work of giant hands, a race of genii once rearing temples of 

 rock, but now chained up in a spell of enchantment, while their 

 structures are falling in ruins through centuries of decay. Along 

 the southern and southeastern flank of the Paunsagant (plateau) 

 these ruins stretch mile after mile. But the crowning work is Table 

 Cliff in the background. Standing eleven thousand feet above sea 

 level and projected against the deep blue of the western sky, it 

 presents the aspect of a vast Acropolis crowned with a Parthenon. 

 It is hard to dispel the fancy that this is a work of some intelligence 

 and design akin to that of humanity, but far grander. Such glorious 

 tints, such keen contrasts of light and shade, such profusion of 

 sculptured forms, can never be forgotten by him who has once be- 

 held it." 



Thus everywhere the imagination is roused to the comparison 

 of the natural and the artificial; with little effort it discovers classic 

 outlines in these rain-carved forms. And occasionally there is some- 



