150 
THE GEAHD CAS^ON DISTRICT. 
mean nothing to the senses, and all that we are conscious of in this respect 
is a troubled sense of immensity. 
Beyond the eastern Cloister, five or six miles distant, rises a gigantic 
mass which we named Shiva’s Temple. It is the grandest of all the buttes, 
and the most majestic in aspect, though not the most ornate. Its mass is as 
great as the mountainous part of Mount Washington. That summit looks 
down 6,000 feet into the dark depths of the inner abyss, over a succession 
of ledges as impracticable as the face of Bunker Hill Monument. All 
around it are side gorges sunk to a depth nearly as profound as^hat of the 
main channel. It stands in the midst of a great throng of cloister-like 
buttes, with the same noble profiles and strong lineaments as those imme- 
diately before us, with a plexus of awful chasms between them. In such a 
stupendous scene of wreck it seemed as if the fabled “Destroyer” might 
find an abode not wholly uncongenial. 
In all the vast space beneath and around us there is very little upon 
which the mind can linger restfully. It is completely filled with objects of 
gigantic size and amazing form, and as the mind wanders over them it is 
hopelessly bewildered and lost. It is useless to select special points of con- 
templation. The instant the attention lays hold of them it is drawn to 
something else, and if it seeks to recur to them it cannot find them. Every- 
thing is superlative, transcending the power of the intelligence to compre- 
hend it. There is no central point or object around which the other ele- 
ments are grouped and to which they are tributary. The grandest objects 
are merged in a congregation of others equally grand. Hundreds of these 
mighty structures, miles in length, and thousands of feet in height, rear 
their majestic heads out of the abyss, displaying their richly-molded plinths 
and friezes, thrusting out their gables, wing-walls, buttresses, and pilasters, 
and recessed with alcoves and panels. If any one of these stupendous 
creations had been planted upon the plains of central Europe it would have 
influenced modern art as profoundly as Fusiyama has influenced the deco- 
rative art of Japan. Yet here they are all swallowed up in the confusion 
of multitude It is not alone the magnitude of the individual objects that 
makes this spectacle so portentous, but it is still more the extravagant pro- 
