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
One of the most out-of-the-way regions left within our boundaries
is that lying around the junction of the Grand and Green Rivers in
eastern Utah. These two rivers, flowing at this point in cañons about
twelve hundred feet deep, come together in a cañon thirteen hundred
feet deep to form the Colorado. You climb out from the junction by
a narrow crevice, and on top find yourself on a barren, much-cut-up
plateau. The surface is verdureless, consisting for the most part of
bare rock split by numerous crevices. You are in the midst of "The
Land of Standing Rock," as the Indians call it. Powell, in referring
to this locality, says: "We must not conceive of piles of bowlders or
heaps of fragments, but a whole land of naked rock, with giant forms
carved on it; cathedral-shaped buttes towering hundreds or thousands of
feet; cliffs that can not be scaled, and cañon walls that shrink the
river into insignificance; with vast hollow domes, and tall pinnacles
and shafts set on the verge overhead." Near and far in all directions
the eye encounters pinnacle after pinnacle, butte after butte, cliff
after cliff, like a stone forest, impassable, impenetrable, except to
the trained mountaineer. Some of the shapes here are most peculiar.
One which I call the Synagogue (Fig. 12), as no other name, so far as I
know, has ever been applied, is representative. Its lines are strikingly
like those of the temple of Khandaria in Khwahrao, Central India. It
has a round main structure, showing several deep lines of horizontal
molding, and is of a deep reddish-brown color. The "roof" is a light
pinkish red, as I remember it, and rounds up to a central cupola of the
lower color. Springing from the front is a beautiful minaret, carrying
the darker color to the apex.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--THE SYNAGOGUE.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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