NAKED ROCK. 195 
Above this bed of limestone we have beds of bright red sandstones, 
weathered so as to form shelves on a scale even greater than in the rust 
colored rocks' below, but in many places they break down in steep slopes. 
Then above we have buff and gray sandstones, and limestones heavily bed 
ded, and near the summit, where the limestone prevails, they are full of 
nodules of chert. This cherty limestone weathers in columns, and towers, 
and pinnacles; curious forms of standing rock are arranged all along the 
brink of the canon wall. 
So below we have granite buttresses, themselves set with pinnacles and 
towers, then broken slopes, then somber recesses, set with ragged shelves, 
then strangely carved and fretted slopes, and lemon colored shales, then 
vast amphitheaters of marble, then red slopes and sandstone shelves, then 
cliffs of ragged limestone, set with towers. 
The wonderful elaboration and diversity with which this work has been 
done is only equaled by the vast scale on which the plan was laid. 
In many places the conditions of erosion have been such that great 
blocks have been severed from the main plateau and stand as outliers, their 
sides having all the elaborate sculpture of the walls of the canon. Lieu 
tenant Ives, who explored the lower Colorado, made a land trip, from a point 
below the Grand Canon around to the southwest, and climbed the San Fran 
cisco Plateau, and from an elevated point he could look off to the northeast 
and see the region of which we are now speaking. Of this country he says: 
"The extent and magnitude of the system of canons in that direction is 
astounding. The plateau is cut into shreds by these gigantic chasms, and 
resembles a vast ruin. Belts of country, miles in width, have been swept 
away, leaving only isolated mountains standing in the gap fissures, so pro 
found that the eye cannot penetrate their depths, are separated by walls 
whose thickness one can almost span, and slender spires, that seem tottering 
upon their base, shoot up a thousand feet from vaults below." 
In other regions, the rocks, when not covered with soil, or more vigor 
ous vegetation, are at least lichened, or stained, and the rocks themselves of 
somber hue, but in this region they are naked, and many of them brightly 
colored, as if painted by artist gods ; not stained and daubed with inharmo 
nious hues, but beautiful as flowers, and gorgeous as the clouds. Such are 
