Tuesday, April 24, 2007

"Massive beauty, without parallel in this world"



Mormondom being my theme, and my space so limited, I must resist the temptation to give detailed accounts of the many marvellous masterpieces of mimetic art into which we find the rocks of this region everywhere carved by the hand of Nature. . . . in the world of marvellous architectural simulations, vast cemeteries crowded with monuments, obelisks, castles, fortresses, and natural colossi from two to five hundred feet high, done in argillaceous sandstone or a singular species of conglomerate, all of which owe their existance almost entirely to the agency of wind. . . . Is it possible to conceive an instrument more powerful, more versatile? Indeed, practically, there is no kind of surface, no kind of cut, which it is not capable of making. . . . Repeatedly, I saw it gouge out circular grooves around portions of a bluff, and leave them standing as isolated columns, with heavy base and capital, presently to be solidified into just such rockk pillars as throng the cemeteries . . . Contrasting the Mormon settlements with their surrounding desolation, we could not wonder that their success has fortified this people . . .

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