UNDER THE MAPLES 



pulling-down or degradation process. A natural 

 bridge, an obelisk, caves, canals, the profile in the 

 rocks, the architectural and monumental rock 

 forms, such as those in the Grand Canon and in 

 the Garden of the Gods, are all the result of ero- 

 sion. Water and other aerial forces are the build- 

 ers and sculptors, and the nature and structure of 

 the material determine the form. It is as if these 

 striking forms were inherent in the rocks, waiting 

 for the erosive forces to liberate them. The strati- 

 fied rocks out of which they are carved were not 

 laid down in forms that appeal to us, but layer upon 

 layer, like the leaves of a book; neither has the 

 crumpling and deformation of the earth's crust 

 piled them up and folded them in a manner artistic 

 and suggestive. Yet behold what the invisible 

 workmen have carved out of them in the Grand 

 Canon! It looks as though titanic architects and 

 sculptors had been busy here for ages. But only 

 little grains of sand and a vast multitude of little 

 drops of water, active through geologic ages, were 

 the agents that wrought this stupendous spectacle. 

 If the river could have builded something equally 

 grand and beautiful with the material it took out 

 of this chasm! But it could not — poetry at one 

 end of the series and dull prose at the other. The 

 deposition took the form of broad, featureless, 

 uninteresting plains — material for a new series of 

 stratified rocks, out of which other future Grand 



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