“Scrambling to the edge of one of the bastions and looking down, we could see the river far below, dwarfed to a mere silver thread. From this abyss the crags and slopes towered up in endless variety of form, and with the weirdest mingling of colors. Much of the rock, especially of the more crumbling slopes, was of a pale sulphur-yellow. Through this groundwork harder masses of dull scarlet, merging into purple and crimson, rose into craggy knobs and pinnacles, or shot up in sheer vertical walls. In the sunlight of the morning the place is a blaze of strange color, such as one can hardly see anywhere save in the crater of an active volcano. But as the day wanes, the shades of evening, sinking gently into the depths, blend their livid tints into a strange, mysterious gloom, through which one can still see the white gleam of the rushing river and hear the distant murmur of its flow. Now is the time to see the full majesty of the cañon. Perched on an outstanding crag, one can look down the ravine and mark headland behind headland mounting out of the gathering shadows and catching upon their scarred fronts of red and yellow the mellower tints of the sinking sun. And above all lie the dark folds of pine sweeping along the crests of the precipices, which they crown with a rim of green. There are gorges of far more imposing magnitude in the Colorado Basin, but for dimensions large enough to be profoundly striking, yet not too vast to be taken in by the eye at once, for infinite changes of picturesque detail, and for brilliancy and endless variety of coloring, there are probably few scenes in the world more impressive than the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone.” Along the twenty miles of cañon where the walls are highest they have been carved by glacial agencies and weather-worn into many curious forms, generally columnar, but sometimes presenting the appearance of spires, domes, turrets and crenelated battlements, and everywhere the matchless colors of yellow, red, green, and many tints are present. After passing down the extreme length of the cañon, we took the less traveled road running east from Yancy’s Camp and visited the petrified forests; and here we began to comprehend more thoroughly than before the mysteries of the Yellowstone Park Basin. The evidence is here abundant that in the remote past this entire region of 375 square miles was a pleasant vale, where a luxuriant forest abounded, and many monster animals, long since extinct, found a pleasant abode. Following this period of delightful natural conditions, there succeeded a flood of ice that came sweeping with almost unimaginable force from the north, grinding, tearing and destroying until the region was denuded and the very earth furrowed and torn into the wonderful disfigurements which we now behold. In this terrific flood the mountains were precipitated and folded upon the forests and buried with the monster animals that had sought refuge in the spots which became their cemeteries.