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 midday 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, discharged 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 am- 
phitheaters recede into suggestive distances; the salients 
silently advance towards us; the distorted lines range them- 
selves 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 
