XVII
THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT
Zion National Monument, Southern Utah. Area, 120 Square Miles
When, in the seventies, Major J.W. Powell, the daring adventurer of the Grand Canyon, faced Salt Lake City on his return from one of his notable geological explorations of the southwest, he laid his course by a temple of rock "lifting its opalescent shoulders against the eastern sky." His party first sighted it across seventy miles of a desert which "rose in a series of Cyclopean steps." When, climbing these, they had seen the West Temple of the Virgin revealed in the glory of vermilion body and shining white dome, and had gazed between the glowing Gates of Little Zion into the gorgeous valley within, these scenery-sated veterans of the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert passed homeward profoundly impressed and planning quick return.
No wonder that Brigham Young, who had visited it many years before with a party of Mormons seeking a refuge in event of Indian raids or of exile from their Zion, Salt Lake City, had looked upon its glory as prophetic, and named it Little Zion.
Geologists found the spot a fruitful field of study. They found it also a masterpiece of desert beauty.
"Again we are impressed with the marvellous beauty of outline, the infinite complication of these titanic buttes," wrote F.S. Dellenbaugh, topographer of the Powell party, on his second visit. "It is doubtful if in this respect the valley has its equal. Not even the Grand Canyon offers a more varied spectacle; yet all is welded together in a superb ensemble."