Grand, glorious, sublime, are the pictorial cliffs of vermilion hue; yet a more magnificent spectacle is presented by an unfolding of the panorama that stretches southward, revealing as it does the heavenly crowned and resplendently painted temples and towers of the Virgin. Here the slopes, the serpentine ledges, and the bosses of projecting rock, interlarded with scanty soil, display all the colors of the rainbow, and in the distance may be likened to the painter’s palette. The bolder tints are of maroon, purple, chocolate, magenta and lavender, with broad bands of white laid in horizontal belts. The cañon proper is 7,000 feet deep here, but less than two miles beyond it stands the central and commanding object of this sublime painting, the glorious western temple that looms up 4,000 feet above the rapid river. This, however, is only the foreground of a matchless panorama, for right opposite are a mighty throng of structures wrought in the same exalted style, separated by two principal forks of the Virgin, known as the Parunuweap and the Mukuntuweap, or Little Zion Valley. At one point the two side cañons swing around and form a junction, where the walls break into giant pediments covered with the most remarkable and picturesque carvings. The sumptuous, bewildering and mazy effects are boldly discernible; but detail is lost when attempt is made to analyze it. The flank of the wall receding up the Mukuntuweap is similarly sculptured and decorated for two miles, and then changes into new kaleidoscopic forms still more wonderful and impressive. A row of towers half a mile high is sculptured out of the palisade, and stands in relief before its face. There is an eloquence in their forms which stirs the imagination with a singular power, and kindles in even the dullest mind a glowing response. Just behind them, and rising a thousand feet higher, is the eastern temple, crowned with a cylindric dome of white sandstone. Directly in front is a complex group of white towers, springing from a central pile and mounting to the clouds. The highest peak in this cumulus mass is almost pure white, with brilliant streaks of carmine descending its vertical walls, while the truncated summit is a deep red. Nothing can exceed the wondrous beauty of Little Zion Valley, which separates the two temples and their respective groups of towers. In its proportions it is probably equal to Yosemite, but it very far exceeds that natural wonder in the nobility and beauty of sculpturing. We are not surprised that a Mormon zealot gave to this cañon the name of Little Zion, since the scenery is so imposing as to immediately and powerfully suggest those “houses not built with hands.” Far to the westward is to be seen the last palisade, lifting its imposing front behind an army of towers and domes to an altitude of more than 3,000 feet. Beyond it the view changes quickly, for it passes at once into the Great Basin, which to this region is another world.