88 GRAND CANON' DISTRICT. 



sand feet high, with a steep tolas beneath it of eleven or twelve hundred 

 feel more. Wide alcoves receded far back into the mass, and in their 

 depths the clouds floated. Long, sharp Spurs plunged swiftly down, 

 thrusting their monstrous buttresses into the plain below, and sending 

 up pinnacles and towers along the knife edges. But the controlling 

 object was a great butte which sprang into view immediately before us ? 

 and which the salient of the wall had hitherto masked. Upon a ped- 

 estal two miles long and a thousand feet high, richly decorated with 

 horizontal moldings, rose four towers highly suggestive of cathedral 

 architecture. Their altitude above the plain was estimated at about 

 1,800 feet. They were separated by vertical clefts made by the enlarge- 

 ment Of the joints, and many smaller clefts extending from the summits 

 to the pedestal carved the turrets into tapering buttresses, which gave 

 a graceful aspiring effect with a remarkable definiteness to the forms. 

 We named it Smithsonian Butte, and it was decided that a sketch 

 should be made of it; but in a few moments the plan was abandoned or 

 forgotten. For over a notch or saddle formed by a low isthmus which 

 connected the butte with the principal mesa there sailed slowly and 

 majestically into view, as we rode along, a wonderful object. Deeply 

 moved, we paused a moment to contemplate it, and then abandoning the 

 trail we rode rapidly towards the notch, beyond which it soon sank out 

 of sight. In an hour's time we reached the crest of the isthmus, and in 

 an instant there flashed before us a scene never to be forgotten. In 

 coming time it will, I believe, take rank with a very small number of 

 spectacles each of which will, in its own way, be regarded as the most 

 exquisite of its kind which the world discloses. The scene before us 

 was 



THE TEMPLES AND TOWERS OF THE VIROEN. 



At our feet the surface drops down by cliff and talus 1,200 feet upon<v 

 broad and rugged plain cut by narrow caiions. The slopes, the winding 

 ledges, the bosses of projecting rock, the naked, scanty soil, display colors 

 which are truly amazing. Chocolate, maroon, purple, lavender, magenta, 

 with broad bands of toned white, are laid in horizontal belts, strongly 

 contrasting with each other, and the ever-varying slope of the surface 

 cuts across them capriciously, so that tin 1 , sharply defined belts wind 

 about like the contours of a map. From right to left across the fur- 

 ther foreground of the picture stretches the inner caiion of the Virgen, 

 about 700 feet in depth, and here of considerable width. Its bottom is 

 for the most part unseen, but in one place is disclosed by a turn in its 

 course, showing the vivid green of vegetation. Across the caiion, and 

 rather more than a mile and a half beyond it, stands the central and com- 

 manding object of the picture, the western temple, rising 4,000 feet above 

 the river. Its glorious summit was the object we had seen an hour 



