has its own style of architecture, and yet they contrast with one another in the most harmoniously artistic manner. The Elephantine ruins on the Nile, the temples of Greece, the pagodas of China, and the cathedrals of Southern Europe, present no more variety of pleasing structures than those encountered in descending the stair-way from the high plateaus to the deep Cañon of the Colorado. As we pass from terrace to terrace, the scene is constantly changing; not only in the bolder and grander masses which dominate the landscape, but in every detail and accessory as well: in the tone of the color-masses, in the vegetation, and in the spirit and subjective influences of the scenery. The profile of the Vermilion Cliffs is very complex, though conforming to a definite type and composed of simple elements. While varying much in different localities, it never loses its typical character. The cliffs consist of an ascending series of vertical ledges, rising story above story, with intervening slopes covered with heaps of rocks, through which project their fretted edges. The composite effect given by the multiple cliffs and sloping water-tables rising tier above tier, is highly architectural, and shows in striking contrast with the rough and craggy aspect of the cliffs of other regions. This effect is much increased by the aberrant manner in which the wall advances in promontories or recedes in alcoves, and by the wings and gables that jut out from every lateral face. In many places side cañons have cut the terrace platforms deeply, and open in magnificent gate-ways upon the broad desert plain in front. We look into them from afar, wonderingly and questioningly, with our fancy pleased to follow their windings until their sudden turns carry them into distant, unseen depths. In other places the cliffs verge into towering buttes, rearing their unassailable summits into the clouds, rich with the aspiring forms of a pure Gothic type, and flinging back in red and purple the intense sunlight that is poured upon them. Could the imagination blanch those colors, it might compare them with vast icebergs, sent from the face of a glacier and floating majestically out to sea.