In trying to describe the great pines and sequoias of the Sierra, I have
often thought that if one of those trees could be set by itself in some
city park, its grandeur might there be impressively realized; while in its
home forests, where all magnitudes are great, the weary, satiated traveler
sees none of them truly. It is so with these majestic rock structures.

Though mere residual masses of the plateau, they are dowered with the
grandeur and repose of mountains, together with the finely chiseled
carving and modeling of man's temples and palaces, and often, to a
considerable extent, with their symmetry. Some, closely observed, look
like ruins; but even these stand plumb and true, and show architectural
forms loaded with lines strictly regular and decorative, and all are
arrayed in colors that storms and time seem only to brighten. They are not
placed in regular rows in line with the river, but "a' through ither,"
as the Scotch say, in lavish, exuberant crowds, as if nature in wildest
extravagance held her bravest structures as common as gravel-piles.
Yonder stands a spiry cathedral nearly five thousand feet in height,
nobly symmetrical, with sheer buttressed walls and arched doors and
windows, as richly finished and decorated with sculptures as the great
rock temples of India or Egypt. Beside it rises a huge castle with arched
gateway, turrets, watch-towers, ramparts, etc., and to right and left
palaces, obelisks, and pyramids fairly fill the gulf, all colossal and
all lavishly painted and carved. 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,