white in comparison with the great body of
limestone below. In the same limestone there are enormous beds of chert,
agates, and carnelians. This limestone is especially remarkable for its
pinnacles and towers. Let it be called the tower limestone.

Now recapitulate: The black gneiss below, 800 feet in thickness; the
variegated quartzite, 800 feet in thickness; the cliff sandstone, 500
feet in thickness; the alcove sandstone, 700 feet in thickness; the red
wall limestone, 1,600 feet in thickness; the banded sandstone, 800 feet
in thickness; the tower limestone, 1,000 feet in thickness.

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 is seen. A
precipitous wall of mountain rises over the river, with crag and
pinnacle and cliff in black and brown, and through it runs an angular
pattern of red and gray dikes of granite. It is but a mountain cliff
which may be repeated in many parts of the world, except that it is
singularly naked of vegetation, and the few plants that find footing are
of strange tropical varieties and are conspicuous because of their
infrequency.

Now climb 800 feet and a point of view is reached where the variegated
quartzites are seen. At the summit of the black gneiss a terrace is
found, and, set back of this terrace, walls of elaborate sculpture
appear, 800 feet in height. This is due to the fact that though the
rocks are exceedingly hard they are in very thin layers or strata, and
these strata are not horizontal, but stand sometimes on edge, sometimes
highly inclined, and sometimes gently inclined. In these variegated beds
there are many deep recesses and sharp salients, everywhere set with
crags, and the wall is b