At length, I began to try to separate and identify some of these
formations. Directly in the foreground, a savage looking mountain
reared its splintered head from the abyss, and stood defiantly
confronting me, six thousand feet above the Cañon's floor. Though
practically inaccessible to the average tourist, this has been
climbed, and is named Mount Ayer, after Mrs. Edward Ayer, the first
woman who ever descended into the Cañon to the river's edge. Beyond
this, other mountains rise from the gulf, many of which resemble the
Step Pyramid at Sakhara, one of the oldest of the royal sepulchres
beside the Nile. But so immeasurably vaster are the pyramids of this
Cañon than any work of man, that had the tombs of the Pharaohs been
placed beside them, I could not have discovered them without a
field-glass. Some of these grand constructions stand alone, while
others are in pairs; and many of them resemble Oriental temples,
buttressed with terraces a mile or two in length, and approached by
steps a hundred feet in height. Around these, too, are many smaller
mountainous formations, crude and unfinished in appearance, like
shrines commenced and then abandoned by the Cañon's Architect. Most
of us are but children of a larger growth, and love to interpret
Nature, as if she reared her mountains, painted her sunsets, cut her
cañons, and poured forth her cataracts solely for our instruction and
enjoyment. So, when we gaze on forms like these, shaped like gigantic
temples, obelisks, and altars fashioned by man's hands, we try to see
behind them something personal, and even name them after Hindu,
Grecian, and Egyptian gods, as if those deities made them their
abodes. Thus, one of these shrines was called by the artist, Thomas
Moran, the Temple of Set; three others are dedicated respectively to
Siva, Vishnu, and Vulcan; while on the apex of a mighty altar, still
unnamed, a twisted rock-formation, several hundred feet in height,