Gems of sunlight sparkled on its bosom and
scintillated in the ripples left behind by the oars. When seated with
our backs to the strongest light, and when glancing along the top of
such a pool instead of into it, the mirror-like surface gave way to a
peculiar purplish tone which seemed to cover the pool, so that one
would forget it was roily water, and saw only the iridescent beauty of
a mountain stream.
The wonderful marble walls--better known to the miners as the blue
limestone walls--now rose from the water's edge to a height of eight
or nine hundred feet, the surface of its light blue-gray rock being
stained to a dark red, or a light red as the case might be, by the
iron from the sandstone walls above. There were a thousand feet of
these sandstone layers, red in all its varying hues, capped by the
four-hundred foot cross-bedded sandstone wall, breaking sheer, ranging
in tone from a soft buff to a golden yellow, with a bloom, or glow, as
though illuminated from within. As we proceeded, another layer could
be seen above this, the same limestone and with the same fossils--an
examination of the rock-slides told us--as the topmost formation at
the Grand Canyon. This was not unlike the cross-bedded sandstone in
colour, but lacked its warmth and richness of tint.
A close, examination of the rocks revealed many colours, that figured
but little in the grand colour scheme of the canyon as a whole--the
detailed ornamentation of the magnificent rock structure.
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