From side to side of the vast gulf, temples, palaces, towers,
and spires come soaring up in thick array half a mile or nearly a mile
above their sunken, hidden bases, some to a level with our standpoint,
but none higher. And in the inspiring morning light all are so fresh and
rosy-looking that they seem new-born; as if, like the quick-growing crimson
snow-plants of the California woods, they had just sprung up, hatched by
the warm, brooding, motherly weather.
In trying to describe the great pines and sequoias of the Sierra, I have
often thought that if one of those trees could be set by itself in some
city park, its grandeur might there be impressively realized; while in its
home forests, where all magnitudes are great, the weary, satiated traveler
sees none of them truly. It is so with these majestic rock structures.
Though mere residual masses of the plateau, they are dowered with the
grandeur and repose of mountains, together with the finely chiseled
carving and modeling of man's temples and palaces, and often, to a
considerable extent, with their symmetry. Some, closely observed, look
like ruins; but even these stand plumb and true, and show architectural
forms loaded with lines strictly regular and decorative, and all are
arrayed in colors that storms and time seem only to brighten. They are not
placed in regular rows in line with the river, but "a' through ither,"
as the Scotch say, in lavish, exuberant crowds, as if nature in wildest
extravagance held her bravest structures as common as gravel-piles.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25