SCULPTURE OP THE JURASSIC. 
37 
and many of them look merry and farcical. The land here is full of 
comedy. It is a singular display of Nature’s art mingled with nonsense. 
It is well named the Colob, for the word has no ascertainable meaning, 
and yet it sounds as if it ought to have one. 
Nor are these the only forms which the Jurassic discloses. Here and 
there blank faces of the white wall are brought into view as the sinuous line 
of its front advances and recedes. Isolated masses cut off from the main 
formation, and often at considerable distances from it, lie with a majestic 
repose upon the broad expanse of the terrace. These sometimes become 
very striking in their forms. They remind us of great forts with bastions 
and scarps nearly a thousand feet high. The smaller masses become regular 
truncated cones with bare slopes. Some of them take the form of great 
domes where the eagles may build their nests in perfect safety. But noblest 
of all are the white summits of the great temples of the Virgen gleaming 
through the haze. Here Nature has changed her mood from levity to 
religious solemnity, and I’evealed her fervor in forms and structures more 
beautiful than anything in human art. But we shall see more of this here- 
after and from much more advantageous stand-points than the summit of 
the Markdgunt. There only faint suggestions of the reality are given. We 
only perceive in imperfect detail some throngs of towers, snow-white above 
and red below, the bristling spires of ornate buttes, or a portion of the 
grand sweep of a wing- wall thrust out from some unseen fa9ade. None of 
them appear in their full relations to the whole, and aU of them ai’e weak- 
ened, faded and flattened by the distance. 
The Jurassic white sandstone seems to be peculiar to the northern and 
western portions of the Plateau Province. In southern Colorado and west- 
ern New Mexico, no stratigraphic member has yet been found which can 
be identified with it. There I’emains, however, the possibility that in those 
more easterly regions the Jurassic sandstone may form the upper part of 
the sandstone series now reckoned as Triassic. Some color is given to this 
view by the following facts. As we pass southeastward from the Aquarius, 
or from the Kaiparowits across the heart of the Plateau Province, we find 
that the exposures of the Jura and Trias both undergo gradual changes of 
aspect. Both formations grow thinner. While they are powerfully con- 
