From "Death Comes for the Archbishop"

I just drove from Santa Fe to Flagstaff and I think I know this beautiful area (around Acoma) that Cather is describing. I can see the "cathedrals" but as I was driving along the I-40, I kept seeing large trains radiating out from the center of a large round station. Anyway: rivals the Grand Canyon (Herbert's "inverted cathedral").

***

From the flat red sea of sand rose great rock mesas, generally Gothic in outline, resembling vast cathedrals. They were not crowded together in disorder, but placed in wide spaces, long vistas between.

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