TUE GEAND CASON DISTKIOT. 
GO 
lar ones are seen on either hand along its receding vista until a turn in the 
course carries the valley out of sight. In its proportions it is about equal 
to Yo Semite, but in the nobility and beauty of the sculptures thei’e is no 
comparison. It is Hyperion to a satyr. No wonder the fierce Mormon 
zealot, who named it, was, reminded of the Great Zion, on which his fervid 
thoughts were bent — “of houses not built with hands, eternal in the heavens.” 
From those highly wrought groups in the center of the picture the eye 
escapes to the westward along a mass of cliffs and buttes covered with the 
same profuse decoration as the walls of the temple^ and of the Paninuweap. 
Their color is brilliant red. Much animation is imparted to this part of the 
scene by the wandering courses of the mural fronts which have little con- 
tinuity and no definite trend. The Triassic terrace out of which they have 
been carved is cut into by broad amphitheaters and slashed in all directions 
by wide canon valleys. The resulting escarpments stretch their courses in 
every direction, here fronting towards us, there averted ; now receding be • 
hind a nearer mass, and again emerging from an unseen alcove. Far to the 
westward, twenty miles away, is seen the last palisade lifting its imposing 
front behind a mass of towers and domes to an altitude of probably near 
3,000 feet and with a grandeur which the distance cannot dispel. Beyond 
it the scenery changes almost instantly, for it passes at once into the Great 
Basin, which, to this region, is as another world. 
