842 BULLETIN UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



a mere line against tbe bright horizon. Bowlders, huge and angular, 

 broken off from the walls or precipitous cliffs, have rolled down among 

 the timber and marked their courses by devastation. Piled up some- 

 times at the base of a monument-group, they impart a wild effect to the 

 strange picture. Fissures, cracks, and narrow ravines, channels for rush- 

 ing water during the heavy rains of the "wet season", are cut into the 

 cliffs. Bordered by the monuments and containing the debris incident 

 upon their formation, they look dark and weird. Caves extending into 

 the readily yielding rocks appear as inviting abodes for the bears for 

 which that regiou is noted. 



Though much might be written about this curious spot, the pen can 

 convey no adequate idea of its impressive beauty. It seems as though 

 nature had here furnished, with a lavish hand, designs to be imitated by 

 man, designs that for the singularity of their form and depth of expres- 

 sion must necessarily inspire the seeker after severe beauty and har- 

 mony. As the growing vegetation has been employed in furnishing us 

 with one of the noblest styles of architecture, so could these forms be 

 utilized to produce impressions appropriate to the purposes for which 

 they might be adopted. 



It will, perhaps, best serve the purposes of this paper to describe a few 

 of the groups observed, and to permit each reader therefrom to construct 

 for himself a picture of what was seen. An illustration given in the 

 Annual Eeport for 1875, Plate XIX, page 156, may serve more readily 

 to interpret what will be said regarding the forms it exhibits. 



Near the top of one of the walls mentioned above, I found a small 

 group, thoroughly characteristic. The highest one of the monuments 

 measures about 35 feet. Essentially all of them are " bottle shaped". A 

 heavy mass near the base, more or less angular, diminishes in diameter 

 either gradually or rapidly, thus forming the slender "neck". This 

 supports a i^rotecting cap of proportionate size. Small, lateral monu- 

 ments are constantly being formed or being destroyed. A singular 

 instance was observed in the group under discussion : one monument 

 placed on top of the other. The poise is so true that both may go on 

 diminishing in size for many years to come and may yet retain their 

 relative positions. Deeply furrowed sides very aptly illustrate the word 

 " weather-beaten". Similar in structure and general appearance are the 

 large monuments located between some of the projecting walls. From 

 a base of 60 to 100 feet in diameter, more frequently oval than round, 

 they rise to a height of 400 feet.* Often small columns, with or without 

 cap-stones, ornament their sides for a long distance upward. One strik- 

 ing dissimilarity between the forms of this region and those of Monu- 

 ment Park exists in their varying height. While at the latter place 

 definitely located strata determine the relative height of the columns, 

 we have here an absolutely irregular distribution of the capping-stones, 

 resulting in the great variations of relative size. In this feature, per- 

 * Measurements of heights were made by means of aneroid and hand-level. 



