AMPHITHEATERS OF THE KAIBAB. 
169 
HINDOO AMPHITHEATER. 
It is eroded back from the river a distance of about ten miles. The 
two branches are parallel, and each is about three miles in width. They are 
therefore much narrower than the Tapeats or the Shinumo, and strikingly 
different in plan. They appear from above as immense canon-like gorges 
opening far away into the central or main avenue of the Grand Canon. 
Their upper ends are bounded by circular walls which descend at once cliff 
below cliff to a depth of about 3,600 feet. Thence towards the river they 
grow deeper at the rate of over 200 feet to the mile. The walls are finely 
sculptured and richly colored. As we look down the long vista and out 
into the central chasm beyond we see the great throng of giant buttes and 
temples, vast pyramids and towers ornamented with rich tracery, all clus- 
tered together so thickly that thej^ seem to crowd each other. At the lower 
end of the eastern branch, or near the confluence of the two branches, rises 
the largest and perhaps the most conspicuous of all the jjagodas, Shiva’s 
Temple. It is more than a mile high, and remarkably symmetrical in its 
profiles. In this butte the entire local Carboniferous series is preserved. Its 
summit is a horizontal tablet of the cherty limestone nearly a mile in width 
occupying a horizon sensibly even with the summit of the main plateau. 
Around it are gorges of immense depth into which the faQades of the temple 
descend by a succession of cliffs and taluses. The rain sculpture in the edges 
of the strata is quite ornamental, and the detail forms repeat themselves in 
characteristic ways in every member. 
In these amphitheaters we cannot fail to be much impressed with the 
intricate and yet systematic manner in which the ground plan of the walls is 
laid out. Great alcoves and cusps are formed, and wherever the wall makes 
a turn it is by a well-rounded inward curve or by a sharp cusp-like projec- 
tion. The architectural details are always striking, and by their profusion 
and richness suggest an Oriental character. 
The long and rather wide promontory ending at Point Sublime sepa- 
rates the Hindoo Amphitheater from the Shinumo. It is interesting here to 
note the peculiar relation of the surface ravines of the Kaibab to these 
mighty excavations. In truth, it seems at first as if the surface ravines had 
