DUTTON.) THE CHASM IN THE KAIBAR. 155 



strength and animation. All things seem to grow in beauty, power, and 

 dimensions. What was grand before has become majestic, the majestic 

 becomes sublime, and, ever expanding and developing, the sublime passes 

 beyond the reach of our faculties and becomes transcendent. The colors 

 have come back. Inherently rich and strong, though not superlative 

 under ordinary lights, they now begin to display an adventitious brill- 

 iancy. The western sky is all aflame. The scattered banks of cloud 

 and wavy cirrhus have caught the waning splendor, and shine with 

 orange and crimson. Broad slant beams of yellow light, shot through 

 the glory-rifts, fall on turret and tower, on pinnacled crest, and winding 

 ledge, suffusing them with a radiance less fulsome, but akin to that 

 which flames in the western clouds. The summit band is brilliant yel- 

 low; the next below is pale rose. But the grand expanse within is a 

 deep, luminous, resplendent red. The climax has now come. The blaze 

 of sunlight poured over an illimitable surface of glowing red is flung 

 back into the gulf, and, commingling with the blue haze, turns it into a 

 sea of purple of most imperial hue— so rich, so strong, so pure that 

 it makes the heart ache and the throat tighten. However vast the mag- 

 nitudes, however majestic the forms, or sumptuous the decoration, it is 

 in these kingly colors that the highest glory of the Grand Canon is re- 

 vealed. 



At length the sum sinks and the colors cease to burn. The abyss 

 lapses back into repose. But its glory mounts upward and diffuses 

 itself in the sky above. Long streamers of rosy light, rayed out from 

 the west, cross the firmament and converge again in the east ending in 

 a pale rosy arch, which rises like a low aurora just above the eastern 

 horizon. Below it is the dead gray shadow of the world. Higher and 

 higher climbs the arch followed by the darkening pall of gray, and as it 

 ascends it fades and disappears, leaving no color except the after-glow 

 of the western clouds, and the lusterless red of the chasm below. Within 

 the abyss the darkness gathers. Gradually the shades deepen and 

 ascend, hiding the opposite wall and enveloping the great temples. For 

 a few moments the summits of these majestic piles seem to float upon 

 a sea of blackness, then vanish in the darkness, and, wrapped in the 

 impenetrable mantle of the night, they await the glory of the coming 

 dawn. 



