uttressed by a steep talus in many places. In
the sheen of the midday sun, these rocks, which are besprinkled with
quartz crystals, gleam like walls of diamonds.

A climb of 800 feet over the variegated beds and the foot of the cliff
sandstone is reached. It is usually olive green, with spots of brown and
black, and presents 500 feet of vertical wall over the variegated
sandstone. The dark green is in fine contrast with the variegated beds
below and the red wall above.

Climb these 500 feet and you stand on the cliff sandstone. A terrace
appears, and sometimes a wall of terraces set with alcoves of marvelous
structure. Climb to the summit of this alcove sandstone--700 feet--and
you stand at the foot of the red wall limestone. Sometimes this stands
in two, three, or four Cyclopean steps--a mighty stairway. Oftener the
red wall stands in a vertical cliff 1,600 feet high. It is the most
conspicuous feature of the grand facade and imparts its chief
characteristic. All below is but a foundation for it; all above, but an
entablature and sky-line of gable, tower, pinnacle, and spire. It is not
a plain, unbroken wall, but is broken into vast amphitheaters, often
miles abound, between great angular salients. The amphitheaters also are
broken into great niches that are sometimes vast chambers and sometimes
royal arches 500 or 1,000 feet in height.

Over the red wall limestone, with its amphitheaters, chambers, niches,
and royal arches--a climb of 1,600 feet--is the banded sandstone, the
entablature over the niched and columned marble, an adamantine molding
800 feet in thickness, stretching along the walls of the canyon through
hundreds of miles. This banded sandstone has massive strata separated by
friable shales. The massive strata are the horizontal elements in the
entablature, but the intervening shales are carved with a beautiful
fretwork of vertical forms, the sculpture of the rills. The massive
sandstones are white, gray, blue, and purple, but the shales are a
brilliant red; thus variously colored bands of massive rock are
separated by bands of vertically carved shales of a brilliant hue.

On these highly colored beds the tower limestone is found, 1,000 feet in
height. Everywhere this is carved into towers, minarets, and domes, gray
and cold, golden and warm, alabaster and pure, in wonderful variety.

Such are the vertical elements of which the Grand Canyon facade is
composed. Its horizontal elements must next be consid