the smoke of
incense from its countless altars. A similar, and even more
impressive, scene is visible here in the late afternoon, when all
the western battlements in their turn grow resplendent, while the
eastern walls submit to an eclipse; till, finally, a gray pall drops
upon the lingering bloom of day, the pageant fades, the huge
sarcophagi are mantled in their shrouds, the gorgeous colors which
have blazed so sumptuously through the day grow pale and vanish, the
altar fires turn to ashes, the mighty temples draw their veils and
seem deserted by both gods and men, and the stupendous panorama
awaits, beneath the canopy of night, the glory of another dawn.

[Illustration: A STUPENDOUS PANORAMA.]

[Illustration: A TANGLED SKEIN OF CANONS.]

It was my memorable privilege to see, one afternoon, a thunder storm
below me here. A monstrous cloud-wall, like a huge gray veil, came
traveling up the Canon, and we could watch the lightning strike the
buttes and domes ten or twelve miles away, while the loud peals of
thunder, broken by crags and multiplied by echoes, rolled toward us
through the darkening gulf at steadily decreasing intervals.
Sometimes two flashes at a time ran quivering through the air and
launched their bolts upon the mountain shrines, as though their
altars, having been erected for idolatrous worship, were doomed to be
annihilated. Occasionally, through an opening in the clouds, the sun
would suddenly light up the summit of a mountain, or flash a path of
gold through a ravine; and I shall never forget the curious sensation
of seeing far beneath me bright sunshine in one canon and a violent
storm in another. At last, a rainbow cast its radiant bridge across
the entire space, and we beheld the tempest disappear like a troop of
cavalry in a cloud of dust beneath that iridescent arch, beyond whose
curving spectrum all the temples stood forth, still intact in their
sublimity.

[Illustration: ON THE BRINK.]

At certain points along the Canon, promontories jut out into the
abyss, like headlands which in former times projected into an ocean
that has disappeared. Hence, riding along the brink, as one may do
for miles, we looked repeatedly into many lateral fissures, from
fifteen hundred to three thousand feet in depth. All these, however,
like gigantic fingers, pointed downward to the centre of the Canon,
where, five miles away, and at a level more than six thousand feet
below the brink on which we stood, exten