duttoh.1 THE VERMILION CUFFS. 87 



excessive, almost beyond belief, and produce the strangest deceptions. 



Masses which are widely separated seem to be superposed or continuous. 

 Lines and surfaces, which extend towards us at an acute angle with the 

 radius of vision, are warped around until they seem to cross it at a right 

 angle. Grand fronts, which ought to show depth and varying distance, 

 become flat and are troubled with false perspective. Proportions which 

 are full of grace and meaning are distorted and belied. During the mid- 

 day hours the cliffs seem to wilt and droop as if retracting their grandeur 

 to hide it from the merciless radiance of the sun whose very effulgence 

 flouts them. Even the colors are ruined. The glaring face of the wall, 

 where the light falls full upon it, wears a scorched, overbaked, dis- 

 charged look; and where the dense black shadows are thrown — for there 

 are no middle shades — the magical haze of the desert shines forth with 

 a weird, metallic glow which has no color in it. But as the sun declines 

 there comes a revival. The half-tones at length appear, bringing into 

 relief the component masses; the amphitheaters recede into suggestive 

 distances; the salients silently advance towards us; the distorted lines 

 range themselves into true perspective; the deformed curves come back- 

 to their proper sweep; the angles grow clean and sharp; and the whole 

 cliff arouses from lethargy and erects itself in grandeur and power, 

 as If conscious of its own majesty. Back also come the colors, and as 

 the sun is about to sink they glow with an intense orange-vermilion 

 that seems to be an intrinsic luster emanating from the rocks themselves. 

 But the great gala-days of the cliffs are those when sunshine and storm 

 are waging an even battle; when the massive banks of clouds send their 

 white diffuse light into the dark places and tone down the intense glare 

 of the direct rays; when they roll over the summits in stately procession, 

 wrapping them in vapor and revealing cloud-girt masses here and there 

 through wide rifts. Then the truth appears and all deceptions are ex- 

 posed. Their real grandeur, their true forms, and a just sense of their 

 relations are at last fairly presented, SO that the mind can grasp them. 

 And they are very grand — even sublime. There is no need, as we look 

 upon them, of fancy to heighten the picture, nor of metaphor to present 

 it. The simple truth is quite enough. I never before had a realizing 

 sense of a cliff 1,800 to 2,000 feet high. T think I have a definite and 

 abiding one at present. 



As we moved northward from Short Creek, we had frequent oppor- 

 tunities to admire these cliffs and bultes, with the conviction that they 

 were revealed to us in their real magnitudes and in their true relations. 

 They awakened an enthusiasm more vivid than we had anticipated, and 

 one which the recollection of far grander scenes did not dispel. At 

 length the trail descended into a shallow basin where a low ledge of 

 sandstones, immediately upon the right, shut them out from view; but 

 as we mounted the opposite rim a new scene, grander and more beau 

 tiful than before, suddenly broke upon us. The cliff again appeared, 

 presenting the heavy sandstone member in a sheer wall nearly a thou- 



