170 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



pleating, braiding, dovetailing, are carried to the 

 point of confusion; yet on this vast scale it has a 

 look of orderliness that is unnatural: and under 

 sunset light this whole foothill range for leagues be- 

 comes a chequer of red and purple, a charm of color, 

 a mystery of design. 



On entering the caiion the sides are at first not 

 high, and are built of whitish earth. But as one goes 

 on the walls increase in height and verticality, and 

 in strangeness of form, while the canon narrows to 

 a gorge, then a defile. Novel colors appear. Cliffs 

 mainly of dusky red are banded and splashed with 

 lavender, chocolate, bright ochre, purple, gray, ashy 

 dark green, and brilliant lighter red. Clefts only a 

 few feet in width wind away from the main caiion. 

 Curious shapes are met — gullies, cirques, domed 

 recesses, tunnels, perpendicular walls of unbroken 

 smoothness topped with turrets and spires in peril- 

 ous balance. There has been wild work here in some 

 Heroic Age of Geologies: enormous mud eruptions, 

 I suppose, succeeded by cooling conditions almost 

 equally violent, and these followed by ages of varied 

 though slower play of elements. Even Kaweah was 

 impressed, and stared about him like any tourist. 



The passage way became yet narrower, the cliffs 

 more vast. I do not think five hundred feet is an 

 overestimate of their height in some places, and the 

 nearness of the walls to the beholder doubles or 

 trebles their towering effect. One feels as if he were 

 at the bottom of a well. A feature that interested 

 me was the formation, in places, of a sort of lace- 

 work, curiously fashioned of earth, which hung in 



