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When about a mile down, the separation line between the cross-bedded sandstone and the upper red sandstone is clearly revealed to the left of the trail. By this time all timidity has vanished, and you implicitly trust both mule and trail, even when going around that narrow ledge known as Cape Horn.
Then it winds its way down and around the cherty limestone, to the top of the cross-bedded sandstone, down which zigzags and steps lead one to the spring itself. This is located in a picturesque spot. Picture a great, overhanging wall at the very bottom of the cross-bedded sandstone, from twelve to fifty and more feet high, the recess being perhaps thirty or forty feet back.
On going down the Bright Angel Trail, one cannot fail to see, as he passes the tap of the cross-bedded sandstone, the break in the strata. To the left it is fully one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet higher than it is on the right. The same depression may be observed in driving out to Hopi, Point, or returning.
A few feet further, and the cross-bedded sandstone may be seen far below on the right, out of plumb with the same mass on the left, to which it belongs, clearly showing that some convulsion of nature has either thrust the mass on the left up, or forced the mass on the right down.
The cherty limestone strata are thus largely covered, but the next stratum is the clear band of cross-bedded sandstone, which corresponds to the second member of the geological series seen in the arm of the amphitheatre at Maricopa Point, and is from five hundred to six hundred feet wide.
Leaving El Tovar promptly at 8:30 A. M., fortified with a good breakfast, and suitably clothed, the trail party in a few minutes reaches the head of Bright Angel Trail near Bright Angel Camp. For three-quarters of a mile this trail descends, zigzagging back and forth until the top of the cross-bedded sandstone is reached. Faulting in the Sandstones.
In climbing back, my eye, now sharpened by my geologic reading, dwelt frequently and long upon the horizon where that cross-bedded Carboniferous sandstone joins the Carboniferous limestone above it. How much older the sandstone looked! I could not avoid the impression that its surface must have formed a plane of erosion ages and ages before the limestone had been laid down upon it.
Just above, and farther to the left, is a peculiar temple, resting upon sloping taluses of the red strata beneath, its cap formed of alone, narrow ridge of cross-bedded sandstone. It has two great cloisters in front, and is named Isis Temple, after the feminine god of the Egyptians.
At the proper angle it is seen to be as prominent before Shiva as is Horus, but our angle of vision gives it the retreating effect. It is a gracefully domed temple in the cross-bedded sandstone, and clearly reveals its five hundred feet superior height over Horus. The walls seen behind Osiris are not those of Point Sublime, as some suppose.
The summit limestone-beds are pale yellow; next below these are the beautiful rose-colored cross-bedded sandstones; next there are a thousand feet of brilliant red sandstones; and below these the red wall limestones, over two thousand feet thick, rich massy red, the greatest and most influential of the series, and forming the main color-fountain. Between these are many neutral-tinted beds.
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