THE GRAND GANON DISTRICT. 
5(i 
appear, bringing into relief the component masses ; the amphitheaters 
recede into suggestive distances; the salients silently advance towards us; 
the distorted lines range themselves into true perspective; the deformed 
curves come back to their proper sweep ; the angles grow clean and sharp ; 
and the whole cliff arouses from lethargy and erects itself in grandeur 
and power as if conscious of its own majesty. Back also come the colors, 
and as the sun is about to sink they glow with an intense orange vermilion 
that seems to be an intrinsic luster emanating from the rocks themselves. 
But the great gala-days of the cliffs are those when sunshine and storm are 
waering' an even battle; when the massive banks of clouds send their white 
diffuse light into the dark places and tone down the intense glare of the 
direct rays ; when they roll over the summits in stately procession, wrap- 
ping them in vapor and revealing cloud-girt masses here and there through 
wide rifts. Then the truth appears and all deceptions are exposed. Their 
real grandeur, their true forms, and a just sense of their relations are at 
last fairly presented, so that the mind can grasp them. And they are very 
grand — even sublime. There is no need, as we look upon them, of fancy 
to heighten the picture, nor of metaphor to present it. The simple truth 
is quite enough. I never before had a realizing sense of a cliff 1,800 to 
2,000 feet high. I think I have a definite and abiding one at present. 
As we moved northward from Short Creek, we had frequent opportu- 
nities to admire these cliffs and buttes, with the conviction that they were 
revealed to us in their real magnitudes and in their true relations. They 
awakened an enthusiasm more vivid than we had anticipated, and one 
which the recollection of far grander scenes did not dispel. At length the 
toil descended into a shallow basin where a low ledge of sandstones, imme- 
diately upon the right, shut them out from view ; but as we mounted the 
opposite rim ia new scene, grander and more beautiful than before, suddenly 
broke upon us. The cliff again appeared, presenting the heavy sandstone 
member in a sheer wall nearly a thousand feet high, with a steep talus 
beneath it of eleven or twelve hundred feet more. Wide alcoves receded 
far back into the mass, and in their depths the clouds floated. Long, sharp 
spurs plunged swiftly down, thrusting their monstrous buttresses into the 
plain below, and sending up pinnacles and towers along the knife edges. 
