As we journeyed along this chasm, we were struck with admiration at the
strange and fanciful figures made by the washing of the waters during
the rainy season. In some places, perfect walls, formed of a reddish
clay, were to be seen standing; in any other locality it would have been
impossible to believe but that they had been raised by the hand of man.
The strata of which these walls were composed was regular in width,
hard, and running perpendicularly; and where the softer sand which had
surrounded them had been washed away, the strata still remained,
standing in some places one hundred feet high, and three or four hundred
in length.
Here and there were columns, and such was their architectural
regularity, and so much of chaste grandeur was there about them, that we
were lost in admiration and wonder. In other places the breastworks of
forts would be plainly visible, then again the frowning turrets of some
castle of the olden time. Cumbrous pillars, apparently ruins of some
mighty pile, formerly raised to religion or royalty, were scattered
about; regularity and perfect design were strangely mixed up with ruin
and disorder, and nature had done it all. Niagara has been considered
one of her wildest freaks; but Niagara falls into insignificance when
compared with the wild grandeur of this awful chasm.
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