HO GRAND CANON DISTRICT. 



they l.x.k like a mere band of intricate fretwork— a line of balustrade 

 on the summit of a noble facade. Between the alcoves the projecting 

 pediments present gable-enda towards the valley plain. Vet whitherso- 

 ever the curtain wall extends the same profile greets the eyes. The 

 architect has adhered to his design as consistently and persistently as 

 the braiders of the Thebaid or of the Acropolis. As we pass alcove 

 after alcove, and pediment after pediment, they grow loftier, wider and 

 deeper, and their decoration becomes more ornate. At Length we pass 

 one which is vast indeed. It is recessed back from the main front three- 

 fourths of a mile, and shows three sides of an oblong- room with walls 

 1,800 feet in height. The fourth side is obliterated and the space opens 

 into the broad valley. Wonderfully rich and profuse are the pinnacles 

 and statues along the upper friezes. The fancy is kindled as the eye 

 wanders through the inclosure. 



We look across the valley, which is here three miles in width, and 

 behold the other wall, which presents an aspect wholly different, but quite 

 as interesting. The western wall of the Toroweap is here lower than t he 

 eastern, but still is more than a thousand feet high. The geologist soon 

 surmises that along the valley bottom runs a fault which drops the 

 country on the west several hundred feet, and the conjecture soon 

 becomes certainty. Above and beyond the western escarpment is the 

 platform of the Uinkaret Plateau. Upon its summit is a throng of large 

 basaltic cones in perfect preservation. Streams of lava larger than any 

 hitherto seen have poured from their vents, flooding many a square 

 mile of mesa land, and in the wide alcoves they have reached the brink 

 of the wall and cascaded over it. Still pouring down the long taluses 

 they have reached the valley bottom below and spread out in wide fields, 

 disappearing underneath the clayey alluvium, which has buried much of 

 their lower portions. The appearance of these old lava cascades, a mile 

 or more wide, a thousand feet high, and black as Erebus, is striking in 

 the extreme. There are live of these basaltic cataracts, each consist- 

 ing of many individual coulees. Between them the bold pediments of 

 brightly-colored Carboniferous strata jut out into the valley. 



At length we approach the lower end of the Toroweap. The scenery 

 here becomes colossal. Its magnitude is by no means its most impress- 

 ive feature, but precision of the forms. The dominant idea ever before 

 the mind is the architecture displayed in the profiles. It is hard to 

 realize that this is the work of the blind forces of nature. We feel like 

 mere insects crawling along the street of city flanked with immense 

 temples, or as Lemuel Gulliver might have felt in revisiting the capital 

 of Brobdingnag, and finding it deserted. At the foot of the valley the 

 western wall is nearly 1,500 feet high, the eastern about 2,000, and the 

 interval separating them is about three miles. Suddenly they turn at 

 right angles to right and left, and become the upper wall of the Grand 

 Canon of the Colorado. The Toroweap now opens into the main pas- 

 sageway of the great chasm. The view, however, is much obstructed. 



