Here And There A Flat-Topped Structure May Be Seen, Or
One Imperfectly Domed; But The Prevailing Style Is Ornate Gothic, With
Many Hints Of Egyptian And Indian.
Throughout this vast extent of wild architecture - nature's own capital
city - there seem to be no ordinary dwellings.
All look like grand and
important public structures, except perhaps some of the lower
pyramids, broad-based and sharp-pointed, covered with down-flowing
talus like loosely set tents with hollow, sagging sides. The roofs
often have disintegrated rocks heaped and draggled over them, but in
the main the masonry is firm and laid in regular courses, as if done
by square and rule.
Nevertheless they are ever changing; their tops are now a dome, now a
flat table or a spire, as harder or softer strata are reached in their
slow degradation, while the sides, with all their fine moldings, are
being steadily undermined and eaten away. But no essential change in
style or color is thus effected. From century to century they stand
the same. What seems confusion among the rough earthquake-shaken
crags nearest one comes to order as soon as the main plan of the
various structures appears. Every building, however complicated and
laden with ornamental lines, is at one with itself and every one of
its neighbors, for the same characteristic controlling belts of color
and solid strata extend with wonderful constancy for very great
distances, and pass through and give style to thousands of separate
structures, however their smaller characters may vary.
Of all the various kinds of ornamental work displayed - carving,
tracery on cliff faces, moldings, arches, pinnacles - none is more
admirably effective or charms more than the webs of rain-channeled
taluses. Marvelously extensive, without the slightest appearance of
waste or excess, they cover roofs and dome tops and the base of every
cliff, belt each spire and pyramid and massy, towering temple, and in
beautiful continuous lines go sweeping along the great walls in and
out around all the intricate system of side canyons, amphitheaters,
cirques, and scallops into which they are sculptured. From one point
hundreds of miles of the fairy embroidery may be traced. It is all so
fine and orderly that it would seem that not only had the clouds and
streams been kept harmoniously busy in the making of it, but that
every raindrop sent like a bullet to a mark had been the subject of a
separate thought, so sure is the outcome of beauty through the stormy
centuries. Surely nowhere else are there illustrations so striking of
the natural beauty of desolation and death, so many of nature's own
mountain buildings wasting in glory of high desert air - going to dust.
See how steadfast in beauty they all are in their going. Look again
and again how the rough, dusty boulders and sand of disintegration
from the upper ledges wreathe in beauty for ashes - as in the flowers
of a prairie after fires - but here the very dust and ashes are
beautiful.
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