of its neighbors,
for the same characteristic controlling belts of color and solid strata
extend with wonderful constancy for very great distances, and pass
through and give style to thousands of separate structures, however
their smaller characters may vary.

Of all the various kinds of ornamental work displayed--carving, tracery
on cliff faces, moldings, arches, pinnacles--none is more admirably
effective or charms more than the webs of rain-channeled taluses.
Marvelously extensive, without the slightest appearance of waste or
excess, they cover roofs and dome tops and the base of every cliff,
belt each spire and pyramid and massy, towering temple, and in beautiful
continuous lines go sweeping along the great walls in and out around
all the intricate system of side canyons, amphitheaters, cirques, and
scallops into which they are sculptured. From one point hundreds of
miles of the fairy embroidery may be traced. It is all so fine and
orderly that it would seem that not only had the clouds and streams been
kept harmoniously busy in the making of it, but that every raindrop sent
like a bullet to a mark had been the subject of a separate thought,
so sure is the outcome of beauty through the stormy centuries. Surely
nowhere else are there illustrations so striking of the natural beauty
of desolation and death, so many of nature's own mountain buildings
wasting in glory of high desert air--going to dust. See how steadfast in
beauty they all are in their going. Look again and again how the rough,
dusty boulders and sand of disintegration from the upper ledges wreathe
in beauty for ashes--as in the flowers of a prairie after fires--but
here the very dust and ashes are beautiful.

Gazing across the mighty chasm, we at last discover that it is not its
great depth nor length, nor yet these wonderful buildings, that most
impresses us. It is its immense width, sharply defined by precipitous
walls plunging suddenly down from a flat plain, declaring in terms
instantly apprehended that the vast gulf is a gash in the once unbroken
plateau, made by slow, orderly erosion and removal of huge beds of
rocks. Other valleys of erosion are as great--in all their dimensions
some are greater--but none of these produces an effect on the
imagination at once so quick and profound, coming without study, given
at a glance. Therefore by far the greatest and most influential feature
of this view from Bright Angel or any other of the canyon views is