and of Time are finger-posts that point the thoughts of mortals to
eternal heights; and we find cause for hope in the fact that, even in
a place like this, Man is superior to Nature; for he interprets it,
he finds in it the thoughts of God, and reads them after Him.

[Illustration: NEAR THE TEMPLE OF SET.]

[Illustration: HANCE'S TRAIL, LOOKING UP.]

The coloring of the Grand Cañon is no less extraordinary than its
forms. Nature has saved this chasm from being a terrific scene of
desolation by glorifying all that it contains. Wall after wall,
turret after turret, and mountain range after mountain range belted
with tinted strata, succeed one another here like billows petrified
in glowing colors. These hues are not as brilliant and astonishing in
their variety as are the colors of the Yellowstone Cañon, but their
subdued and sombre tones are perfectly suited to the awe-inspiring
place which they adorn. The prominent tints are yellow, red, maroon,
and a dull purple, as if the glory of unnumbered sunsets, fading from
these rugged cliffs, had been in part imprisoned here. Yet, somehow,
specimens of these colored rocks lose all their brilliancy and beauty
when removed from their environment, like sea-shells from the beach;
a verification of the sentiment so beautifully expressed in the lines
of Emerson:

"I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar."