DOWN THE CAÑON FROM INSPIRATION POINT.
Yes, but none like this. For, see, instead of sullen granite walls, these sides are radiant with color. Age after age, and aeon after aeon, hot water has been spreading over these miles of masonry its variegated sediment, like pigments on an artist's palette. Here, for example, is an expanse of yellow one thousand feet in height. Mingled with this are areas of red, resembling jasper. Beside these is a field of lavender, five hundred feet in length, and soft in hue as the down upon a pigeon's breast. No shade is wanting here except the blue, and God replaces that. It is supplied by the o'erspreading canopy of heaven.
Yet there is no monotony in these hues. Nature, apparently, has passed along this cañon, touching the rocks capriciously; now staining an entire cliff as red as blood, now tingeing a light pinnacle with green, now spreading over the whole face of a mountain a vast Persian rug. Hence both sides of the cañon present successive miles of Oriental tapestry. Moreover, every passing cloud works here almost a miracle; for all the lights and shades that follow one another down this gorge vary its tints as if by magic, and make of it one long kaleidoscope of changing colors.
BELOW THE UPPER FALLS.
MILES OF COLORED CLIFFS.
Nor are these cliffs less wonderful in form than color. The substance of their tinted rocks is delicate. The rain has, therefore, plowed their faces with a million furrows. The wind has carved them like a sculptor's chisel. The lightning's bolts have splintered them, until, mile after mile, they rise in a bewildering variety of architectural forms. Old castles frown above the maddened stream, a thousand times more grand than any ruins on the Rhine. Their towers are five hundred feet in height. Turrets and battlements, portcullises and draw-bridges, rise from the deep ravine, sublime and inaccessible; yet they are still a thousand feet below us! What would be the effect could we survey them from the stream itself, within the gloomy crevice of the cañon? Only their size convinces us that they are works of Nature, not of Art. Upon their spires we see a score of eagles' nests. The splendid birds leave these at times, and swoop down toward the stream; not in one mighty plunge, but gracefully, in slow, majestic curves, lower and lower, till we can follow them only through a field-glass, as they alight on trees which look to us like shrubs.
TEMPLES SCULPTURED BY THE DEITY.