THE DIVINE ABYSS 
hence the Catskills have few cafion-like valleys, 
though there are here and there huge gashes through 
the mountains that give a cafion effect, and there 
are gigantic walls high up on the face of some of the 
mountains that suggest one side of a mighty cafion. 
In the climate of the Catskills the rock-masses of 
the Colorado would crumble much more rapidly 
than they do here. The lines of many of these nat- 
ural temples or fortresses are still more lengthened 
and attenuated than those of the Temple of Isis, 
appearing like mere skeletons of their former selves. 
The forms that weather out the formation above 
this, the Permian, appear to be more rotund, and 
tend more to domes and rounded hills. 
One of the most surprising features of the Grand 
Cajfion is its cleanness —its freedom from débris. 
It is a home of the gods, swept and garnished; no 
litter or confusion or fragments of fallen and broken 
rocky walls anywhere. Those vast sloping taluses 
are as clean as a meadow; rarely at the foot of the 
huge vertical walls do you see a fragment of fallen 
rock. It is as if the processes of erosion and de- 
gradation were as gentle as the dews and the snows, 
and carved out this mighty abyss grain by grain, 
which has probably been the case. That much of 
this red sandstone, from the amount of iron it con- 
tains, or from some other cause, disintegrates easily 
and rapidly, is very. obvious. Looking down from 
Hopi Point upon a vast ridge called the ‘‘ Man-of- 
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