THE VERMILION CLIFFS. 
55 
the mastery. Rolling masses of cumuli rose up into the blue to incompre- 
hensible heights, their flanks and summits gleaming with sunlight, their 
nether suifaces above the desert as flat as a ceiling, and showing, not the 
dull neutral gray of the east, but a rosy tinge caught from the reflected 
red of rocks and soil. As they drifted rapidly against the great barrier, 
the currents from below flung upward to the summits, rolled the vaporous 
masses into vast whorls, wrapping them around the towers and crest-lines, 
and scattering torn shreds of mist along the rock-faces. As the day wore 
on the sunshine gained the advantage. From overhead the cloud-masses 
stubbornly withdrew, leaving a few broken ranks to maintain a feeble resist- 
ance. But far in the northwest, over the Colob, they rallied their black 
forces for a more desperate struggle, and answered with defiant flashes of 
lightning the incessant pour of sun-shafts. 
Superlative cloud effects, common enough in other countries, are lament- 
ably infrequent here; but, when they do come, their value is beyond 
measure. During the long, hot summer days, when the sun is high, the 
phenomenal features of the scenery are robbed of most of their grandeur, 
and cannot, or do not, wholly reveal to the observer the realities which 
render them so instructive and interesting. There are few middle tones of 
light and shade. The effects of foreshortening- are excessive, almost beyond 
belief, and produce the strangest deceptions. Masses which are widely 
separated seem to be superposed or continuous. Lines and surfaces, which 
extend towards us at an acute angle with the radius of vision, are warped 
around until they seem to cross it at a right angle. Gri'and fronts, which 
ought to show depth and varying distance, become flat and are troubled 
with false perspective. Proportions which are full of grace and meaning- 
are distorted and belied. During- the midday hours the cliffs seem to wilt 
and droop as if retracting their grandeur to hide it from the merciless 
radiance of the sun whose very effulgence flouts them. Even the colors 
are ruined. The glaring face of the wall, where the light falls full upon it, 
wears a scorched, overbaked, discharged look; and where the dense black 
shadows are thrown — for there are no middle shades — the magical haze of 
the desert shines forth with a weird, metallic glow which has no color in it. 
But as the sun declines there comes a revival. The half-tones at length 
