Nature, not contented with building enchanted palaces, had frescoed them.

At this distance, indeed, the separate tints of the strata could not be discerned, but their general effect of variegation was distinctly visible, and the result was a landscape of the Thousand and One Nights.
To the south were groups of crested mounds, some of them resembling the spreading stumps of trees, and others broad-mouthed bells, all of vast magnitude.

These were of sandstone marl, the caps consisting of hard red and green shales, while the swelling boles, colored by gypsum, were as white as loaf-sugar.

It was another specimen of the handiwork of deluges which no man can number.
Far away to the southwest, and yet faintly seen through the crystalline atmosphere, were the many-colored knolls and rolls and cliffs of the Painted Desert.

Marls, shales, and sandstones, of all tints, were strewn and piled into a variegated vista of sterile splendor.