Here the canon walls are in Carboniferous Limestone with a pleasing
variety of color in the strata, and the erosion-carving not overdone,
the most notable piece being the Knife-blade. This, at first view,
appears to be a high, round tower, but the train following the curve,
reveals the fact that it is not a tower, but a thin, curved
knife-blade. The sun just for one instant shone through a rift in the
clouds, and added special charm to the scene.
[Illustration: The Knife-Blade. Page 178.]
A short distance beyond is Crystal Cave station, where the guide was
waiting to take us in charge. He is an intelligent young man who has
served an enlistment term in the army, is recently married, very
obliging, and proud of being trustworthy.
The scenery here is most beautiful as well as grand. The canon makes a
sharp turn toward the south, and on the north opens out into another
canon of even greater beauty and higher walls, the perpendicular being
three hundred feet in places. Crystal Cave is in the hill embraced by
the junction curve. The natural entrance is more than two hundred feet
above the canon bed and was naturally approached from above. A short
walk up the north canon, whose name has unfortunately slipped away, was
over ice and snow the chinook had failed to reach, and brought us to a
long stairway against the wall, which affords a more direct approach
than nature gave and is a fair test of physical perfection.
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