“Across the canyon stands the central and commanding object of the picture, the Western Temple, rising 4,000 feet above the river. Its glorious summit was the object we had seen an hour before, and now the matchless beauty and majesty of its vast mass is all before us. Yet it is only the central object of a mighty throng of structures wrought up to the same exalted style and filling up the entire panorama. Right opposite us are the two principal forks of the Virgin, the Parunuweap coming from the east, and the Mukuntuweap, or Little Zion Valley, descending from the north. The Parunuweap is seen emerging through a stupendous gateway and chasm nearly 3,000 feet in depth. The further wall of this canyon swings northward and becomes the eastern wall of Little Zion Valley. As it sweeps down the Parunuweap, it breaks into great pediments covered all over with the richest carving. The effect is much like that which the architect of the Milan Cathedral appears to have designed, though here it is vividly suggested rather than fully realized. The sumptuous, bewildering, mazy effect is all there, but when we attempt to analyze it in detail it eludes us. [Illustration: _Distant View of the West Temple of the Virgin, Zion National Park_] “The flank of the wall receding up the Mukuntuweap is for a mile or two similarly decorated, but soon breaks into new forms much more impressive and wonderful. A row of towers half a mile high is quarried out of the palisade and stands well advanced from its face. There is an eloquence to their forms which stirs the imagination with singular power and kindles in the mind of the dullest observer a glowing response. “Directly in front of us a complex group of white towers, springing from a central pile, mounts upward to the clouds. Out of their midst, and high over all, rises a dome-like mass which dominates the entire landscape. It is almost pure white, with brilliant streaks of carmine descending its vertical walls. At the summit it is truncated and a flat tablet is laid upon the top, showing its edge of deep red. It is impossible to liken this object to any familiar shape, for it resembles none. Yet its shape is far from being indefinite; on the contrary it has definiteness and individuality which extort an exclamation of surprise when first beheld. Call it a dome; not because it has the ordinary shape of such a structure but because it performs the functions of a dome.