ng in
their variety as are the colors of the Yellowstone Canon, but their
subdued and sombre tones are perfectly suited to the awe-inspiring
place which they adorn. The prominent tints are yellow, red, maroon,
and a dull purple, as if the glory of unnumbered sunsets, fading from
these rugged cliffs, had been in part imprisoned here. Yet, somehow,
specimens of these colored rocks lose all their brilliancy and beauty
when removed from their environment, like sea-shells from the beach;
a verification of the sentiment so beautifully expressed in the lines
of Emerson:

"I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar."

[Illustration: MIST IN THE CANON.]

To stand upon the edge of this stupendous gorge, as it receives its
earliest greeting from the god of day, is to enjoy in a moment
compensation for long years of ordinary uneventful life. When I
beheld the scene, a little before daybreak, a lake of soft, white
clouds was floating round the summits of the Canon mountains, hiding
the huge crevasse beneath, as a light coverlet of snow conceals a
chasm in an Alpine glacier. I looked with awe upon this misty curtain
of the morn, for it appeared to me symbolic of the grander curtain of
the past which shuts out from our view the awful struggles of the
elements enacted here when the grand gulf was being formed. At
length, however, as the light increased, this thin, diaphanous
covering was mysteriously withdrawn, and when the sun's disk rose
above the horizon, the huge facades of the temples which looked
eastward grew immediately rosy with the dawn; westward, projecting
cliffs sketched on the opposite sides of the ravines, in dark blue
silhouettes, the evanescent forms of castles, battlements, and
turrets from which some shreds of white mist waved like banners of
capitulation; stupendous moats beneath them were still black with
shadow; while clouds filled many of the minor canons, like vapors
rising from enormous cauldrons. Gradually, as the solar couriers
forced a passage into the narrow gullies, and drove the remnant of
night's army from its hiding-places, innumerable shades of purple,
yellow, red, and brown appeared, varying according to the composition
of the mountains, and the enormous void was gradually filled to the
brim with a luminous haze, which one could fancy was