PORTION OF THE ANCIENT PALACE AT CASA GRANDE, ARIZONA.
PART OF THE ANCIENT CITY WALL AI CASA GRANDE, ARIZONA.
The ruins of the ancient city of Casa Grande, in Arizona, and others not less wonderful in the same region, prove that this portion of our country was once inhabited by a powerful and numerous race of people, who possessed a civilization and knowledge of the arts on a parallel with Babylon and Assyria. The walls of these ruins are built of adobe, thick and strong, and guarded with buttresses and towers to meet and repel the attacks of an enemy; but their age and the date of their occupancy cannot be determined. They may be a thousand years old, and it is just as probable that they date back two or three times that distance into the unknown past. Their origin is a profound mystery, and must always remain such.
BRIDAL VEIL, SHOSHONE FALLS.
In many places the arid desolation which was noticeable in the upper portion and on the plateau, and which stretched away on both sides, was broken by patches of vegetation, and the appearance of side gorges in which creeks were still contributing to the river. Storms were not infrequent, too, and these occurring where the cañon walls were a mile high and close together, produced an effect that was almost supernatural in its awfulness. Every obscuration of the sun brought dense shadows in the chasm, which were split in twain by blinding flashes, while the deep thunder echoed sharply between the cliffs, producing a roaring sound that was almost deafening. Such rain-storms, however, were invariably confined to the immediate vicinity of the cañon, the territory lying two or three miles east or west continuing parched, with hardly a cloud above it. Even more remarkable than the stupendous walls which confine the Colorado River, are the ruined cave habitations which are to be seen along the lofty and apparently inaccessible ledges, in which a vanished race long years ago evidently sought refuge from their enemies. These caves are no doubt natural excavations, but in many instances the mouths are partially walled and otherwise fortified. They were reached by very narrow, precipitous and devious paths, and being extremely difficult to attain by the occupants themselves, presented an impregnable front to invaders. But the security which such cavernous retreats afforded was purchased at great cost, for we wonder how the inhabitants managed to exist, situated as they were in a desolate country, where there was great scarcity of both vegetable and animal life. Perhaps the most strikingly beautiful sections of the Grand Cañon are the Vermilion Cliffs, and the Temples and Towers of the Virgin, the one fading into the other. Vermilion Cliffs are a great wall of remarkable height and length of persistent proportions, and so ornate with natural sculpturing, and rich with parti-coloring, as to justify the most extravagant language in describing them. Each of the several terraces has its own style of architecture, and yet they contrast with one another in the most harmoniously artistic manner. The Elephantine ruins on the Nile, the temples of Greece, the pagodas of China, and the cathedrals of Southern Europe, present no more variety of pleasing structures than those encountered in descending the stair-way from the high plateaus to the deep Cañon of the Colorado. As we pass from terrace to terrace, the scene is constantly changing; not only in the bolder and grander masses which dominate the landscape, but in every detail and accessory as well: in the tone of the color-masses, in the vegetation, and in the spirit and subjective influences of the scenery. The profile of the Vermilion Cliffs is very complex, though conforming to a definite type and composed of simple elements. While varying much in different localities, it never loses its typical character. The cliffs consist of an ascending series of vertical ledges, rising story above story, with intervening slopes covered with heaps of rocks, through which project their fretted edges. The composite effect given by the multiple cliffs and sloping water-tables rising tier above tier, is highly architectural, and shows in striking contrast with the rough and craggy aspect of the cliffs of other regions. This effect is much increased by the aberrant manner in which the wall advances in promontories or recedes in alcoves, and by the wings and gables that jut out from every lateral face. In many places side cañons have cut the terrace platforms deeply, and open in magnificent gate-ways upon the broad desert plain in front. We look into them from afar, wonderingly and questioningly, with our fancy pleased to follow their windings until their sudden turns carry them into distant, unseen depths. In other places the cliffs verge into towering buttes, rearing their unassailable summits into the clouds, rich with the aspiring forms of a pure Gothic type, and flinging back in red and purple the intense sunlight that is poured upon them. Could the imagination blanch those colors, it might compare them with vast icebergs, sent from the face of a glacier and floating majestically out to sea.
Grand, glorious, sublime, are the pictorial cliffs of vermilion hue; yet a more magnificent spectacle is presented by an unfolding of the panorama that stretches southward, revealing as it does the heavenly crowned and 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 palette. The bolder tints are of maroon, purple, chocolate, magenta and lavender, with broad bands of white laid in horizontal belts. The cañon proper is 7,000 feet deep here, but less than two miles beyond it stands the central and commanding object of this sublime painting, the glorious western temple that looms up 4,000 feet above the rapid river. This, however, is only the foreground of a matchless panorama, for right opposite are a mighty throng of structures wrought in the same exalted style, separated by two principal forks of the Virgin, known as the Parunuweap and the Mukuntuweap, or Little Zion Valley. At one point the two side cañons swing around and form a junction, where the walls break into giant pediments covered with the most remarkable and picturesque carvings. The sumptuous, bewildering and mazy effects are boldly discernible; but detail is lost when attempt is made to analyze it. The flank of the wall receding up the Mukuntuweap is similarly sculptured and decorated for two miles, and then changes into new kaleidoscopic forms still more wonderful and impressive. A row of towers half a mile high is sculptured out of the palisade, and stands in relief before its face. There is an eloquence in their forms which stirs the imagination with a singular power, and kindles in even the dullest mind a glowing response. Just behind them, and rising a thousand feet higher, is the eastern temple, crowned with a cylindric dome of white sandstone. Directly in front is a complex group of white towers, springing from a central pile and mounting to the clouds. The highest peak in this cumulus mass is almost pure white, with brilliant streaks of carmine descending its vertical walls, while the truncated summit is a deep red.
Nothing can exceed the wondrous beauty of Little Zion Valley, which separates the two temples and their respective groups of towers. In its proportions it is probably equal to Yosemite, but it very far exceeds that natural wonder in the nobility and beauty of sculpturing. We are not surprised that a Mormon zealot gave to this cañon the name of Little Zion, since the scenery is so imposing as to immediately and powerfully suggest those “houses not built with hands.”