Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1898: Volume 54, November 1898Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1898: Volume 54, November 1898
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
There are also in some places domes hollowed out. In Glen Cañon of the
Colorado, a little below the mouth of the San Juan, is a dome of this
character carved out of the homogeneous sandstone by the action of a
pretty brook, which in fair weather is a mere rivulet, but in rain
time is an angry flood, sweeping down on its tide immense quantities
of sand. This little stream enters at the back of the cavern through a
very deep, narrow cleft, not more than a foot or two wide, and after a
plunge of some thirty feet or more into a clear pool trickles on out
to the river, which flows past the entrance. The chamber is about two
hundred feet high, with a narrow crevice twisting on up to the top of
the cliffs, about a thousand feet, while the area of the sandy floor is
about two hundred by five hundred. Its mouth is barred by a little grove
of box-elder trees. When the storm is abroad the innocent brook grows
to a giant in an hour, because of the rain accumulating on the barren,
rock-surfaced country as on the roof of a house, and, gathering the
load of sand in its impetuous clutch, it hurls it against the bounding
walls, thus doing its part in the war of the waters against the land.
I have counted dozens of these cascades leaping over the cañon walls
during heavy rainstorms. An exploring party once camped within the dome
mentioned, and, thinking it rendered well their songs, they named it
"Music Temple." Some carved their names on the soft sandstone wall, and
three of these a short time after were sent by the Indians to the Great
Dome of all.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--TENNYSON'S MONUMENT.]
The extensive Pink Cliffs, forming the escarpment of the southern edge
of the Great Basin, are of the colonnade type, and for many miles their
exquisite color and massive columnar façades crown the high country ten
thousand feet or more above the sea, visible far to southward, and with
the underlying Gray Cliffs and the still lower down Vermilion Cliffs
(which find their beginning in Glen Cañon of the Colorado, and trace
their serpentine line leagues to the west to meet the Temples of the
Virgin) form one of the most magnificent panoramas to be found anywhere
in the world. Detached and isolated portions of these Pink Cliffs,
surrounded by the upper members of the Gray, produce sometimes novel
effects. I recall one sunny morning when I found myself suddenly in a
silent grassy glade, green and gray all round, with before me what can
be likened only to an immense pipe organ, its delicate pink columnar
pipes standing full two hundred feet high against a somber background of
pines where Æolus could be heard sighing for the lost chord.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--TEMPLES OF THE VIRGIN.]
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