So Tremendous A Chasm Would Be One Of The World's Greatest
Wonders Even If, Like Ordinary Canyons Cut In Sedimentary Rocks, It
Were Empty And Its Walls Were Simple.
But instead of being plain, the
walls are so deeply and elaborately carved into all sorts of recesses - alcoves, cirques, amphitheaters, and side canyons - that, were you to
trace the rim closely around on both sides, your journey would be
nearly a thousand miles long.
Into all these recesses the level,
continuous beds of rock in ledges and benches, with their various
colors, run like broad ribbons, marvelously beautiful and effective
even at a distance of ten or twelve miles. And the vast space these
glorious walls inclose, instead of being empty, is crowded with
gigantic architectural rock forms gorgeously colored and adorned with
towers and spires like works of art.
Looking down from this level plateau, we are more impressed with a
feeling of being on the top of everything than when looking from the
summit of a mountain. From side to side of the vast gulf, temples,
palaces, towers, and spires come soaring up in thick array half a mile
or nearly a mile above their sunken, hidden bases, some to a level
with our standpoint, but none higher. And in the inspiring morning
light all are so fresh and rosy-looking that they seem new-born; as
if, like the quick-growing crimson snowplants of the California woods,
they had just sprung up, hatched by the warm, brooding, motherly
weather.
In trying to describe the great pines and sequoias of the Sierra, I
have often thought that if one of these trees could be set by itself
in some city park, its grandeur might there be impressively realized;
while in its home forests, where all magnitudes are great, the weary,
satiated traveler sees none of them truly. It is so with these
majestic rock structures.
Though mere residual masses of the plateau, they are dowered with the
grandeur and repose of mountains, together with the finely chiseled
carving and modeling of man's temples and palaces, and often, to a
considerable extent, with their symmetry. Some, closely observed,
look like ruins; but even these stand plumb and true, and show
architectural forms loaded with lines strictly regular and decorative,
and all are arrayed in colors that storms and time seem only to
brighten. They are not placed in regular rows in line with the river,
but "a' through ither," as the Scotch say, in lavish, exuberant
crowds, as if nature in wildest extravagance held her bravest
structures as common as gravel-piles. Yonder stands a spiry cathedral
nearly five thousand feet in height, nobly symmetrical, with sheer
buttressed walls and arched doors and windows, as richly finished and
decorated with sculptures as the great rock temples of India or Egypt.
Beside it rises a huge castle with arched gateway, turrets, watch-towers, ramparts, etc., and to right and left palaces, obelisks, and
pyramids fairly fill the gulf, all colossal and all lavishly painted
and carved.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 146 of 159
Words from 75596 to 76101
of 82482