And, in Titanic mockery of pygmy human work, the glowing rocks appeared grotesquely, yet powerfully scornful of the greatest buildings of mankind. Minaret and spire, minster and dome, façade and campanile, stood guard over the riven precipices, and not to be outdone by man, nature had there erected temple and coliseum, pyramid and vast cathedral, castle and thrice-walled fastness, until it seemed to the boy that there was thrown before his eyes a hysterical riot of every dream and nightmare of architecture that the world had ever conceived. "But--but, I never thought it was anything like this!" exclaimed Roger. The older man repressed a smile at the triteness of the speech, which is that usually educed from every new beholder of the scene. "What do you think of it?" he said. "It doesn't seem real," answered the boy. "It's like the places you see in your dreams that you know can't be so, and what's more, it's like one of those places all set on fire with flames of different colors." [Illustration: GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO. Showing the nature of the apparently impossible obstacles found in traversing it. _Photograph by U.S.G.S._] The topographer nodded. "But what you will find still more strange," he said, "is that it is never twice the same. If you move a few yards away"--he suited the action to the word--"it looks quite different, and even if you stay still, under the changing light new shapes appear." "That's right," affirmed the boy. "From where we stood before, I could see a huge fortress, only it was a vivid purple, and now it's gone. And I suppose those really aren't richly carved churches over there," pointing with his finger, "but a fellow would bet that they were." "Churches without any congregations, and whose only preacher is the thunder, but they do look like temples and are so named. But truly they have been carved, though not by human hands." "By what, then?" asked the boy. "By wind and water," was the reply, "which have made and unmade many a thousand square mile of the earth's surface. If you will notice," he went on, "jagged and pointed as those peaks are, from this side clear across to the other, not one of them rises above the level on which you are standing or rather, above the level of the opposite side of the Canyon, which is a little higher, the slope being continued across. So, you see, you must not think of these like mountains as being built up, but of gorges as being cut down." "And has the river cut it all down?" "The river started it, and then of course every little stream helps, and indeed, every rain adds another fissure to the carving." "But what makes such curious shapes?" asked the boy, still considerably puzzled.