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-cañons, amphitheaters, cirques, and
scallops into which they are sculptured. From one point hundreds of miles
of this fairy embroidery may be traced. It is all so fine and orderly