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, extended a long, glittering trail.  This, where the sunlight struck it, gleamed like an outstretched band of gold.  It was the sinuous Colorado, yellow as the Tiber.

[Illustration:  RIPLEY’S BUTTE.]

[Illustration:  A BIT OF THE RIVER.]

[Illustration:  ON HANCE’S TRAIL.]