Far up the Valley to the eastward there rose far above the rest of the
sky-line, and nearly five thousand feet above the Valley, a hemisphere
of granite, capping the sheer wall, without an apparent tree or shrub to
hide its vast proportions. This we immediately recognized as the famous
To-coy-ae, better known through Watkins's photographs as the Great North
Dome. I am ignorant of the meaning of the former name, but the latter is
certainly appropriate. Between Tu-toch-anula and the Dome, the wall rose
here and there into great pinnacles and towers, but its sky-line is far
more regular than that of the southern side, where we were standing.
We drew close to the edge of the precipice and looked along over our own
wall up the Valley. Its contour was a rough curve from our stand-point
to a station opposite the North Dome, where the Valley dwindles to its
least width, so that all the intermediate crests and pinnacles which
topped the perpendicular wall stood within our vision like the teeth of
a saw, clear and sharp-cut against the blue sky. There is the same
plumb-line uprightness in these mighty precipices as in those of the
opposite side; but their front is much more broken by bold promontories,
and their tabular tops, instead of lying horizontal, slope up at an
angle of forty-five degrees or more from the spot where we were
standing, and make a succession of oblique prism-sections whose upper
edges are between three and four thousand feet in height.
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