150 GRAND CANON DISTRICT. 



satisfactorily studied. The infinity of sharply defined detail is amazing. 

 The eye is instantly caught and the attention firmly held by its sys- 

 tematic character. The parallelism of the lines of bedding is most forci- 

 bly displayed in all the windings of the facades, and these lines arc 

 crossed by the vertical scorings of numberless water-ways. Here, too, 

 are distinctly seen those details which constitute the peculiar style of 

 decoration prevailing throughout all the buttes and amphitheaters of 

 the Kaibab. The course of the walls is never for a moment straight, 

 but extends as a series of cusps and re-entrant curves. Elsewhere the 

 reverse is more frequently seen ; the projections of the wall are rounded 

 and are convex towards the front, while the reentrant portions are cusp. 

 like recesses. This latter style of decoration is common in the Permian 

 buttes and is not rare in the Jurassic. It produces the effect of a thickly 

 set row of pilasters. In the Grand Canon the reversal of this mode pro- 

 duces the effect of panels and niches. In the western Cloister may be 

 seen a succession of these niches, and though they are mere details 

 among myriads, they are really vast in dimensions. Those seen in the 

 Ked Wall limestone are over 700 feet high, and are overhung by arched 

 lintels with spandrels. 



As we contemplate these objects we find it quite impossible to real- 

 ize their magnitude. Not only are we deceived, but we are conscious 

 that we are deceived, and yet we cannot conquer the deception. We 

 cannot long study our surroundings without becoming aware of an 

 enormous disparity in the effects produced upon the senses by objects 

 which are immediate and equivalent ones which are more remote. The 

 depth of the gulf which separates us from the Cloisters cannot be real- 

 ized. We crane over the brink, and about 700 feet below is a talus, 

 which ends at the summit of the cross-bedded sandstone. We may see 

 the bottom of the gorge, which is about 3,800 feet beneath us, and yet 

 the talus seems at least half way down. Looking across the side gorge 

 the cross-bedded sandstone is seen as a mere band at the summit of the 

 Cloister, forming but a very small portion of its vertical extent, and 

 whatever the reason may conclude, it is useless to attempt to persuade 

 the imagination that the two edges of the sandstone lie in the same 

 horizontal plane. The eastern Cloister is nearer than the western, its 

 distance being about a mile and a half. It seems incredible that it 

 can be so much as one-third that distance. Its altitude is from 3,500 

 to 4,000 feet, but any attempt to estimate the altitude by means of 

 visual impressions is felt at once to be hopeless. There is no stadium. 

 Dimensions mean nothing to the senses, and all that we are conscious 

 of in this respect is a troubled sense of immensity. 



Beyond the eastern Cloister, five or six miles distant, rises a gigantic 

 mass which we named Shiva's Temple. It is the grandest of all the 

 buttes, and the most majestic in aspect, though not the most ornate. 

 Its mass is as great as the mountainous part of Mount Washington. 

 That summit looks down 0,000 feet into the dark depths of the iuner 



