THE DIVINE ABYSS 



hence the Cat skills have few canon-like vallej^s, 

 though there are here and there huge gashes through 

 the mountains that give a canon effect, and there 

 are gigantic walls high up on the face of some of the 

 mountains that suggest one side of a mighty canon. 

 In the climate of the Catskills the rock-masses of 

 the Colorado would crumble m.uch more rapidly 

 than they do here. The lines of many of these nat- 

 ural temples or fortresses are still more lengthened 

 and attenuated than those of the Temple of Isis, 

 appearing like mere skeletons of their former selves. 

 The forms that weather out the formation above 

 this, the Permian, appear to be more rotund, and 

 tend more to domes and rounded hills. 



One of the most surprising features of the Grand 

 Canon is its cleanness — its freedom from debris. 

 It is a home of the gods, swept and garnished; no 

 litter or confusion or fragments of fallen and broken 

 rocky walls anywhere. Those vast sloping taluses 

 are as clean as a meadow; rarely at the foot of the 

 huge vertical walls do you see a fragment of fallen 

 rock. It is as if the processes of erosion and de- 

 gradation were as gentle as the dews and the snows, 

 and carved out this mighty abyss grain by grain, 

 which has probably been the case. That much of 

 this red sandstone, from the amount of iron it con- 

 tains, or from some other cause, disintegrates easily 

 and rapidly, is very obvious. Looking down ^rom 

 Hopi Point upon a vast ridge called the " Man-of- 



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