Crossword-Solution: AMPHITHEATERS 13 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 23

They bound the strait on the south side throughout its whole extent, forming a massive sustained wall, flowery and bushy at the base, a zigzag of snowy peaks along the top, which have ragged-edged fields of ice and snow beneath them, enclosed in wide amphitheaters opening to the waters of the strait through spacious forest-filled valleys enlivened with fine, dashing streams.

But instead of being plain, the walls are so deeply and elaborately carved into all sorts of recesses—alcoves, cirques, amphitheaters, and side cañons—that, were you to trace the rim closely around on both sides, your journey would be nearly a thousand miles long.

Marvelously extensive, without the slightest appearance of waste or excess, they cover roofs and dome tops and the base of every cliff, belt each spire and pyramid and massy, towering temple, and in beautiful continuous lines go sweeping along the great walls in and out around all the intricate system of side cañons, amphitheaters, cirques, and scallops into which they are sculptured.

The last rosy gleam faded from the tip of Point Sublime; and as if that were a signal, in all the clefts and canyons below, purple, shadowy clouds marshaled their forces and began to sweep upon the battlements, to swing colossal wings into amphitheaters where gods might have warred, slowly to enclose the magical sentinels.

Gladly we left it all for the grand amphitheaters of the hills where Nature each day holds her jubilees, filled with calm, serene enthusiasm that falls on one as gentle as purple shades that linger about her wooded heights, giving them that strange enchantment that is a part of their real glory.