go hunting the so-called "points of interest."
The verge anywhere, everywhere, is a point of interest beyond one's
wildest dreams.

As yet, few of the promontories or throng of mountain buildings in the
canyon are named. Nor among such exuberance of forms are names thought
of by the bewildered, hurried tourist. He would be as likely to think
of names for waves in a storm. The Eastern and Western Cloisters, Hindu
Amphitheater, Cape Royal, Powell's Plateau, Grand View Point, Point
Sublime, Bissell and Moran Points, the Temple of Set, Vishnu's Temple,
Shiva's Temple, Twin Temples, Tower of Babel, Hance's Column--these
fairly good names given by Dutton, Holmes, Moran, and others are
scattered over a large stretch of the canyon wilderness.

All the canyon rock-beds are lavishly painted, except a few neutral bars
and the granite notch at the bottom occupied by the river, which makes
but little sign. It is a vast wilderness of rocks in a sea of light,
colored and glowing like oak and maple woods in autumn, when the
sun-gold is richest. I have just said that it is impossible to learn
what the canyon is like from descriptions and pictures. Powell's and
Dutton's descriptions present magnificent views not only of the canyon
but of all the grand region round about it; and Holmes's drawings,
accompanying Dutton's report, are wonderfully good. Surely faithful and
loving skill can go no farther in putting the multitudinous decorated
forms on paper. But the COLORS, the living rejoicing COLORS, chanting
morning and evening in chorus to heaven! Whose brush or pencil, however
lovingly inspired, can give us these? And if paint is of no effect, what
hope lies in pen-work? Only this: some may be incited by it to go and
see for themselves.

No other range of mountainous rock-work of anything like the same extent
have I seen that is so strangely, boldly, lavishly colored. The famous
Yellowstone Canyon below the falls comes to mind; but, wonderful as it
is, and well deserved as is its fame, compared with this it is only a
bright rainbow ribbon at the roots of the pines. Each of the series of
level, continuous beds of carboniferous rocks of the canyon has, as we
have seen, its own characteristic color. The summit limestone beds
are pale yellow; next below these are the beautiful rose-colored
cross-bedded sandstones; next there are a thousand feet of brilliant red
sandstones; and below these the red wall limestones, over two thousand
feet thi