ation. One day, while riding from Denver to
Pike's Peak, I saw it (in this instance, one of the smaller diameters)
burrow its way six or seven feet into a sand-bluff, making as smooth a
hole as I could cut in cheese with a borer, of the equal diameter of six
inches throughout, all in less time than I have taken to describe it.
Repeatedly, on the same trip, I saw it gouge out a circular groove
around portions of a similar bluff, and leave them standing as isolated
columns, with heavy base and capital, presently to be solidified into
just such rock pillars as throng the cemeteries or aid in composing the
strange architectural piles mentioned above. Surveyor-General Pierce of
Colorado, (a man whose fine scientific genius and culture have already
done yeoman's service in the study of that most interesting Territory,)
on a certain occasion, saw one of these wind-and-silex augers meet at
right angles a window-pane in a settler's cabin, which came out from the
process, after a few seconds, a perfect opaque shade, having been
converted into ground-glass as neatly and evenly as could have been
effected by the manufacturer's wheel. It is not a very rare thing in
Colorado to be able to trace the spiral and measure the diameter of the
auger by rocks of fifty pounds' weight and tree-trunks half as thick as
an average man's waist, torn up from their sites, and sent revolving
overhead for miles before the windy turbine loses its impetus. The
efficiency of an instrument like this I need not dwell upon. After some
protracted examination and study of many of the most interesting
architectural and sculpturesque structures of the Rocky-Mountain system,
I am convinced that they are mainly explicable on the hypothesis of the
wind-and-silex instrument operating upon material in the earthy
condition, which petrified after receiving its form. Indeed, this same
instrument is at present nowise restricted by that condition in
Colorado, and is not only, year by year, altering the conformation of
all sand and clay bluff's on the Plains, but is tearing down,
rebuilding, and fashioning on its facile lathe many rock-strata of the
solidity of the more friable grits, wherever exposed to its action.
Water at the East does hardly more than wind at the West.

Before we enter the City of the Saints, let me briefly describe the
greatest, not merely of the architectural curiosities, but, in my
opinion, the greatest natural curiosity of any kind which I have eve