Beyond This Is Another Butte, Which, However, At Times,
Can Scarcely Be Detected From The Main Walls Of The Kaibab.
Yet it is a
separate butte of great proportions, and is named Manu Temple, after the
great law-giver of the Hindoos.
Buddha's elevation is seven thousand two
hundred and eighteen feet, while Manu's is seven thousand one hundred and
ninety-two.
Cheops Pyramid. To the left of Buddha Temple, and nearer to us, is a
massive though less ornately carved monument than Buddha. It is Cheops
Pyramid, a detached mass of the red-wall limestone, which, however, is
rapidly losing its red color, owing to the disappearance of the red strata
from above. Cheops is five thousand three hundred and fifty feet in
elevation, and is of a peculiar shape, as of some quaint and Oriental
device of symbolic significance.
Isis and Shiva Temples. Just above, and farther to the left, is a peculiar
temple, resting upon sloping taluses of the red strata beneath, its cap
formed of alone, narrow ridge of cross-bedded sandstone. It has two great
cloisters in front, and is named Isis Temple, after the feminine god of the
Egyptians. Isis has an elevation of seven thousand twenty-eight feet, and
is the eastern support of the gigantic rock mountain which towers over all
the lesser structures. This is Shiva Temple, a solid mass, sliced off from
the main Kaibab. The elevation is seven thousand six hundred and fifty
feet, and it is thus described by Dutton, who named it: "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. The summit looks down six thousand feet into the dark depths of
the inner abyss, over a succession of ledges as impracticable as the face
of Bunker Hill Monument. All around it are side gorges, sunk to a depth
nearly as profound as that of the main channel. It stands in the midst of
a great throng of cloister-like buttes, with the same noble profiles and
strong lineaments as those immediately before us, with a plexus of awful
chasms between. In such a stupendous scene of wreck it seems as if the
fabled 'Destroyer' might find an abode not wholly uncongenial."
Horus Temple. Guardian temples to the west of Isis are Horus and Osiris.
The former is nearer to the river. It is capped with the white sandstone,
and is so closely sculptured that white fragments have fallen upon the
sloping red talus beneath. The whole appearance is not unlike a giant hat
of an Arab, with its streaming folds of white reaching far over the neck
down the back. It rests upon a massive block of the red-wall limestone,
which presents a bold face to the east. Its elevation is six thousand one
hundred and fifty feet.
Osiris Temple. Behind Shiva is Osiris Temple, with an elevation of six
thousand six hundred and thirty-seven feet.
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