Of course there is no use looking for anything so absurd as pictured or painted rocky walls or caves; and we accordingly feel disappointed when the ancient text seems to notice such. The pictures or paint should be "spread abroad" freely or lavishly in the vicinity of caverns, and we know positively that no "paint" or pigment of human composition can be seen on the canyon walls. No artificial pictures are there, and we are compelled to admit that the ancient account here stands falsified.
We have, however, found the caves. Music Temple, for instance measures two hundred feet from floor to roof, and is "a vast chamber carved out of the rock." There are caverns in all directions. And the noisy, roaring river is certainly there as well. One explorer says: "Imagine a chasm that at times is less than a quarter of a mile wide and more than a mile deep, the bed of which is a tossing, roaring, madly impetuous flood, winding its way in a sinuous course along walls that are painted with all the pigments known to nature. What an imposing spectacle!" (n. 46.)
Of course we must object that the "walls" are really not walls and that the "paint" so lavishly spread upon them is not paint at all. The ancient assertion is delusive, but equally so is the modern. Just compare them.
The Virgin River enters the Colorado, and at the place of junction are the "resplendently painted temples and towers of the Virgin. Here the slopes, the serpentine ledges, and the bosses of projecting rock, interlarded with scanty soil, display all the colors of the rainbow, and in the distance may be likened to the painter's pallete. The bolder tints are of maroon, purple, chocolate, magenta, and lavendar, with broad bands of white laid in horizontal belts. (n. 47.)
Is this so-called "paint" lavishly "spread abroad"?
Certainly; one section of the mighty and wondrous gorge is known as "the painted canyon."
Of course the chasm is not really "painted" by artists or human agents, and we need not look for painted cliffs anywhere. Nevertheless modern observers echo the language of the ancients, and we are told today of "the painting of the rocks" and of "deep, painted alcoves" and "painted grottos" (n. 48.)
The term yih (see Williams' dict. pp. 781, 1092) is composed of the characters for "fluid" and "vessel," and signifies "A vessel full to the brim; ready to overflow, to run over; abundant; to spread abroad, to diffuse." As seay, the word which precedes yih in our Chinese note, signifies "to paint," we perceive how the additional term yih teaches that the paint made use of has been applied to extensive surfaces, so that it presents the appearance of having "overflowed" or "run over" the rocky walls and caverns dealt with.
Of course neither writing nor literal pictures could overflow or drench—and adhere to—walls or cliffs. But seay yih might cover the motion of applying paint in a most lavish, copious, overflowing manner. Here are cliffs so "rich with parti-coloring as to justify the most extravagant language in describing them."
It looks as though the gnomes on the job, in the Canyon, just emptied their paint-pots down dizzy cliffs and then went back for more. And such extravagance is in harmony with the symbols which stand for painting and vessels and spreading abroad or overflowing! Mineral paints were freely used and sometimes apparently with considerable care and skill. Thus we read of a red sandstone cliff "unbroken by cracks or crevices or ledges" exhibiting "extensive flat surfaces beautifully stained by iron, till one could imagine all manner of tapestry effects."