It
Is The Eastern Supporter Of Shiva Temple (Seven Thousand Six Hundred And
Fifty Feet), Of Which Captain Dutton, Who Named It, Wrote Eloquently And
Vividly.
Brahma and Zoroaster Temples.
Now turn the eye away from Shiva, across to
the east of Bright Angel Creek. There, outlined against the sky, are two
noble-profiled buttes. The rear one is Brahma Temple (seven thousand five
hundred and fifty-four feet), named after the first of the Hindoo triad,
the Supreme Creator. The smaller butte, an angular mass of solid,
unrelieved rock, sloping in a peculiarly oblique fashion, is Zoroaster
Temple (seven thousand one hundred and thirty feet), thus adding to the
Hindoo pantheon a fane for the founder of the religion of the
Irano-Persians.
Deva Temple, Obi, and Komo Points. Behind Brahma can be seen, when at the
right angle, a flat-topped detached mass (seven thousand three hundred and
forty-four feet) named Deva Temple. Behind and above it are two points, Obi
(eight thousand feet) to the right, and Komo, about the same height, to the
left. These are the salient points on Walhalla Plateau, overlooking the
Ottoman Amphitheatre, the chief temples of which I have already named.
Indian Garden. Passing now through the fertile Indian Garden, Angel Plateau
is reached. The spring at Indian Garden is large enough to irrigate a small
tract of ground. Experience has demonstrated that not only can vegetables
of every kind be grown here, but all kinds of fruits, even oranges, lemons
and grapefruit. For two miles after leaving the Garden, we ride over a
fairly level plateau to its edge, where it overlooks the Granite Gorge.
Here, standing on the Tonto sandstone (three thousand seven hundred and
eight feet), we look down into the dark recesses of the inner gorge, and
picture the events described by Major Powell, when he and his brave band of
intrepid explorers passed through.
O'Neill Butte. Now looking back to the rim at Yaki Point, we see beneath
it, and corresponding to the Battleship, an imposing structure. It has been
named O'Neill Butte, in honor of "Bucky" O'Neill, one of Roosevelt's Rough
Riders, who was slain during the heroic charge at San Juan Hill. He it was
who interested Eastern capitalists in the Anita Mine, and was therefore
indirectly responsible for the building of the Grand Canyon Railway.
Pipe Creek. Those who wish to go to the river now retrace a portion of the
way to the Indian Garden, and then turn off eastward by the old-time Indian
corn-storage houses. Here one obtains a fine view of the wild chaos of
metamorphosed rocks of Pipe Creek. It is a veritable Pluto's workshop,
where the rocks are twisted, burned, and tortured out of all semblance to
their original condition. They are made into cruel and black jagged ridges,
which seem eager to tear and rend you.
Falls of Willow Creek. In these forbidding rocks the Devil's Corkscrew
Trail has been cut, winding and twisting down, down, twelve hundred feet,
passing by a split in the rocks where the waters of Willow Creek make a
waterfall of over two hundred feet.
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