DL'TTOX. I 



THE VERMILION CLIFFS. 85 



branches of hyperbolas. They are graceful in form and indeed genuine 

 lines of beauty. The angles where the straight and curved lines meet, 

 at the bases and summits of the ledges, are very keen and well cut. 

 The composite effect thus given by the multiple cliffs and sloping water- 

 tables rising story above story, by the acute definition of the profiles 

 and horizontal moldings, and by the refined though unobtrusive de- 

 tails, is highly architectural and ornate, and contrasts in the extreme 

 with the rough, craggy, beetling aspect of the cliffs of other regions. 

 This effect is much enhanced by the manner in which the wall ad- 

 vances in promontories or recedes in alcoves, and by the wings and 

 gables with sharp corners and Mansard roofs jutting out from every 

 lateral face where there is the least danger of blankness or monotony. 

 In many places caiions have cut the terrace platform deeply, and 

 open in magnificent gateways upon the broad desert plain in front. We 

 look into them from afar, wonderingly and questioningly, with a fancy 

 pleased to follow their windings until their sudden turns carry them 

 into distant, unseen depths. 



Northwestward of the southernmost promontory at Pipe Spring, the 

 cliff's steadily increase in grandeur and animation, and also assume new 

 features. Near the summit of the series is a very heavy stratum of 

 sandstone, which is everywhere distinguishable from the others. This 

 member is seen at Kanab with a thickness of about 200 feet. It increases 

 westward, becoming 400 feet at Pipe Spring. Beyond that it still in- 

 creases, reaching a thickness of more than 1,200 feet in the valley of the 

 Virgen. It has many strong features, and yet they elude description. 

 One point, however, may be seized upon, and that is, a series of joints 

 nearly vertical with which the mass is everywhere riven. The fissures 

 thus produced have been slowly enlarged by weathering, and down the 

 face of every escarpment run the dark shadows of these rifts. They 

 reach often from top to bottom of the mass and penetrate deeply its 

 recesses. Wherever this great member forms the entablature — and west 

 of Pipe Spring it usually does so — its crest is uneven and presents 

 towers and buttresses produced by the widening of these cracks. Near 

 Short Creek it breaks into lofty truncated towers of great beauty 

 and grandeur, with strongly emphasized vertical lines and decora- 

 tions, suggestive of cathedral architecture on a colossal scale. Still 

 loftier and more ornate become the structures as we approach the 

 Virgen. At length they reach the sublime. The altitudes increase 

 until they approach 2,000 feet above the plain. The wall is recessed 

 with large amphitheaters, buttressed with huge spurs and decorated 

 with towers and pinnacles. Here, too, for the first time, along their 

 westward trend, the Vermilion Cliffs send off' buttes. And giant buttes 

 they verily are, rearing their unassailable summits into the domain of 

 the clouds, rich with the aspiring forms of Gothic type, and Hinging 

 back in red and purple the intense sunlight poured over them. Could 

 the imagination blanch those 1 ; colors, it might compare them with vast 



