These are the elements with which the walls are constructed, from black buttress below to alabaster tower above. All of these elements weather in different forms and are painted in different colors, so that the wall presents a highly complex facade. A wall of homogeneous granite, like that in the Yosemite, is but a naked wall, whether it be 1,000 or 5,000 feet high. Hundreds and thousands of feet mean nothing to the eye when they stand in a meaningless front. A mountain covered by pure snow 10,000 feet high has but little more effect on the imagination than a mountain of snow 1,000 feet high--it is but more of the same thing; but a facade of seven systems of rock has its sublimity multiplied sevenfold.
Let the effect of this multiplied facade be more clearly realized. Stand by the river side at some point where only the black gneiss
A GABLE WITH PINNACLES.
NICHES OR PANELS THE RED WALL LIMESTONE.