* sr V^-XT

-— ■■■ "• —

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR-U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
J. \V. POWELL DLREOTOB

THE

PHYSICAL GEOLOGY

OF THE

GRAND CANON DISTRICT

BY

CT.ARTCNCE E. DUTTON

Extract kkom thu Annual Rki-okt ok tiik Dikkctok ok tiik U. S. Okoi.ock-ai. Survey— 1880-81

53081

WASHINGTON

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFRICE

1882

THE

PHYSICAL GEOLOGY

OF THE

GRAND CANON DISTRICT. _ A ^

5308 1

CAPT. CLARENCE E. DUTTON,

ORDNANCE CORPS, U. S. A.

47

THE PHYSICAL GEOLOGY OF THE GRAND CANON

DISTRICT.

By Clarence E. Dutton.

CHAPTER I.

THE PLATEAU PROVINCE.

The investigations made by this division of the Geological Survey
during- the last two years have been pursued with the object 'of increas-
ing our knowledge of the physical and historical geology of the West
and have had little relation to economic interests. The field of labor is
one of the most impressive and instructive in the world — impressive by
reason of the magnificent scale on which certain processes of nature
have operated, and instructive because the causes, methods, and results
of those processes are revealed with a distinctness which is unparalleled.
This field comprises the Grand and Marble Canons of the Colorado and
the regions which drain into them. To the entire tract, comprising an
area of more than 13,000 square miles, I have given the name of the
Grand Canon District.

The lessons which the geologist finds in this district are many, but the
most conspicuous one embraces those subjects which are included under
the nearly synonymous names "Land Sculpture," " Denudation,"
"Erosion." These processes operate upon the land unceasingly, carv-
ing out mountains and valleys and giving shape and character to the
earth's surface. They represent the work done upon the land by the
winds and rains, by Mowing water, by the chemical reactions of the at-
mosphere and of organic life. These processes are operative almost
everywhere, and their results in the lapse of immense periods of time
attain magnitudes, the statement of which may astonish the ordinary
reader and perhaps excite his incredulity, but which at length appear
veritable when tested by geological research and deduction. In no
other portion of the world are the natural laws governing the processes
of land sculpture exemplified so grandly; nowhere, else are their results
set forth so clearly. The interest excited by the grandeur of the sub-
jects is intensified, and the value of the lessons enhanced, by the ex-
ceptionally intelligible manner in which their materials are presented
for study.

4 (r A 49

50 GRAND CANON DISTRICT

For convenience of geological discussion Professor Powell has divided
that belt of country which lies between the meridian of Denver, Colo.,
and the Pacific and between the 34th and 43d parallels into provinces.
each of which possesses topographical features which distinguish it from
the others. The easternmost he has named (he Park Province. It is
situated in the central and western parts of Colorado and extends north
of that state into Wyoming and south of it into New Mexico. It is pre-
eminently a mountain region, having several long ranges of the second
order of magnitude. The structure and forms of these mountains are
not exactly similar to those of any other region now well known, but
possess some resemblance to the Alps, though not a very close one.

As we pass westward of these ranges in Colorado we enter, near
the western boundary of that state, a region having a very different to
pography. The mountains disappear almost wholly, and in their stead
we find platforms and terraces nearly or quite horizontal on their .sum
mita or floors and abruptly terminated by long lines of cliffs. They be
at greatly varying altitudes, some as high as 11,000 feet above the sea,
others no higher than 5,000, and with still others occupying intermediate
levels. Seldom does the surface of the land rise into conical peaks or
into long narrow crested ridges; but the profiles are long, horizontal lines
suddenly dropping down many hundreds or even two thousand feet
upon another Hat plain below. This region has been very appropriately
named, by Powell, the Plateau Province. It occupies a narrow strip in
the extreme western part of Colorado, a similar strip of western New
Mexico, a large part of southern Wyoming, and rather more than half
of Utah and Arizona.

West of the Plateau Province is the Great Basin, so named by Pre.
mont because it has no drainage to the ocean. Its topography is wholly
peculiar and bears no resemblance to either of the two jnsl alluded to
It contains a large number of ranges, all of which are verv narrow and'
short, and separated from each other by wide intervals of' smooth bar
ren plains. The mountains are of a low order of magnitude for the
most part, though some of the ranges and peaks attain considerable
dimensions. Their appearance is strikingly different from the noble
and picturesque outlines displayed in Colorado. They are jagged wild
and ungraceful in their aspect, and, whether viewed from faTor'ne ,/
repel rather than invite the imagination.

The Wasatch, however, is an exception. This noble range is properly
a part of the Basin Province, and is one of the finest and mos pi n
esqueof the West, but so completely does it contrast with the •

Basin ranges that it may be regarded as an anomaly among then, The
topographical features of this region are also found outside of t ho I
tewhmh Fremont assigned to the Great Basin, and reach sout w l
into Arizona and northward into Idaho and Oregon Tbp b, ™ , ,
covers the western part of Utah, nearly the whl o^^Zl
small portion of southern Oregon and Idaho Tt« » V 7^,
the base of the Sierra Nevada? * "****** ^^^ te

DUTTO.N'.J

THE PLATEAU PROVINCE.

.)

1

Xo attempt will be made here to characterize the Sierra Nevada, partly
because it is not thoroughly understood, but especially because it is re-
mote from the region here to be discussed, and presents few considera-
tions essential to that discussion. The Grand Canon District is a part
of the Plateau Province, and to this province as a whole we may now de-
vote our attention.

As already indicated, it lies between the Park and Basin Provinces, and
its topography differs in the extreme from those found on either side of it.
It is the land of tables and terraces, of buttes and mesas, of cliffs and
canons. Standing upon any elevated spot where the radius of vision
reaches out fifty or a hundred miles, the observer beholds a strange spec-
tacle. The most conspicuous objects are the lofty and brilliantly colored

Fir.. 2.— Bntte of the Cross. Trias.

cliffs. They stretch their tortuous courses across the land in all directions,
yet not without system; here throwing out a great promontory, there
receding in a deep bay. and continuing on and on until they sink below
the horizon or swing behind some loftier mass or fade out in the distant
haze. Each cliff marks the boundary of a geographical terrace and
marks also the termination of some geological series of strata, the edges
of which are exposed like courses of masonry in the scarp-walls of the
palisades. In the distance may be seen the spectacle of cliff rising
above and beyond cliff, like a colossal stairway leading from the torrid
plains below to the domain of the clouds above. Very wonderful at
times is the sculpture of these majestic Malls. There is an architectural
style about it which must be seen to be appreciated. The resemblances
to architecture are not fanciful or metaphorical, but are real and vivid;
so much so that the unaccustomed tourist often feels a vague skepticism
whether these are truly the works of the blind forces of nature or
of some intelligence akin to the human, but far mightier; and even

52

(IRANI) CANON DISTRICT.

Fk;. 3.— a lateral cafion. Btoalante.

the experienced explorer is sometimes brought to a sudden halt and
filled with amazement by the apparition of tonus as definite and elo-
quent as those of art. Each geological formation exhibits in its din's a
distinct style of architecture which is not reproduced among theclifis
of other formations, and these several Btyles differ as much as those which
are cultivated by different races of men.

^ The character which appeals most strongly to the eye is the coloring.
The gentle tints of an eastern landscape, the pale blue of distant mount-
ains, the green of vernal or summer vegetation, the subdued colors of
hillside and meadow, are wholly wanting here, and in their place we
behold belts of brilliant red, yellow, and white, which are intensified
rather than alleviated by alternating belts Of gray. Like tin- architect-

U. S. GLOLOyllCAL SURVEY.

ASSUAL RKPOF.T 18S1. PL. X.

PLATEAU SCENERY— THE MESA VERDE —CRETACEOUS.
Reproduced from Hayde&'a Ninth Annual Report

button.] THE PLATEAU PROVINCE. 53

urc, the colors are characteristic of the geological formations, each series
having its own group and range of colors. They culminate in intensity
in the Permian and Lower Trias, where dark, brownish reds alternate
with bands of chocolate, purple, and lavender, so deep, rich, and re-
splendent that a painter would need to be a bold man to venture to
portray them as they are.

The Plateau country is also the land of canons, in the strictest mean-
ing of that term. Gorges, ravines, cahadas are found and are more or
less impressive in every high region ; and in the vernacular of the West
all such features are termed canons, indiscriminately. But those long,
narrow, profound trenches in the rocks, with inaccessible walls, to which
the early Spaniards gave the name of cajon or canon, are seldom found
outside the plateaus. There they are innumerable and the almost
universal form of drainage channels. Large areas of the Plateau coun-
try are so minutely dissected by them that they are almost inaccessible,
and some limited though considerable tracts seem wholly so. Almost
everywhere the drainage channels are cut from 500 to 3,000 feet below
the general platform of the immediate country. They are abundantly
ramified and every branch is a canon. The explorer upon the mesas
above must take heed to his course in such a place, for once caught in
the labyrinth of interlacing side gorges, he must possess rare craft and
self-control to extricate himself. All these drainage channels lead down
to one great trunk channel cleft through the heart of the Plateau Prov-
ince for eight hundred miles — the chasm of the Colorado, and the can-
ons of its principal" fork, the Green River. By far the greater part of
these tributaries are dry during most of the year, and carry water only
at the melting of the snow and during the brief periods of autumnal
and vernal rains. A very few hold small, perennial streams, coming
from the highlands around the borders of thu province, and swelling to
mad torrents in times of spasmodic floods.

The region is for the most part a desert of the barrenest kind. At
levels below 7,000 feet the heat is intense and the air is dry in the
extreme. The vegetation is very scanty, and even the ubiquitous sage
(Artemisia tridentata) is sparse and stunted. Here and there the cedar
(J 'unipervs occidcntalis)* is seen, the hardiest of arborescent plants, but
it is dwarfed and sickly and seeks the shadiest nooks. At higher levels
the vegetation becomes more abundant and varied. Above 8,000 feet
the plaieaus are forest-clad and the ground is carpeted with rank grass
and an exuberant growth of beautiful summer flowers. The summers
there are cool and moist; the winters severe and attended with heavy
snow-fall.

* Botanists inform mo that tho predominant upland juniper of tho Plateau Province,
as tho species are now distributed according to Dr. Engelmann's revision published in
1877, would be Juniperus Californica, var. Vtahvnsis. rather than J. occidcntalis, some of
tho varieties of which may, however, occur there. Until that revision was made tho
western junipers were little known, and several distinct species were indiscriminately
classed as ./. occidentalix.

54

GRAND ('AXON DISTRICT.

Via. 4.— The Water Pooket Cauou.

The Plateau Province is naturally divided into two portions, a northern
and a southern. The dividing barrier is the CTinta range. This fine
mountain platform is, in one respect, an anomaly anion- the western
ranges. It is the only important one which trends east and west Start
ing fro.,, the eastern flank of the Wasatch, the Uintas projeol eastward
more than L50 miles, and nearly join perpendicularly the Park ranges
of Colorado. Of the two portions into which the Plateau Province is
thus divided, the southern is much the larger. Both have in common
the plateau features; their topographies, climates, and physical features
m general, areof similar types, and their geological features and histon
appear to be closely related. Rut each has also its peculiarities The
northern portion is an interesting and already celebrated field for the

DOTIOH.. THE HIGH PLATEAUS OF UTAH. OO

study of the Cretaceous strata and the Tertiary lacustrine beds. The
subjects which it presents to the geologist are most notably those which
are embraced under the department of stratigraphy — the study of the
succession of strata and co-related succession of organic life. Other-
wise the region is tame, monotonous, and unattractive. The southern
portion, while presenting an abundance of material for stratigraphical
study, and in this respect fully rivaling, and perhaps surpassing, the
northern portion, also abounds in the grandest and most fascinating
themes for the student of physical geology. In respect to scenery, the
northern portion is almost trivial, while the southern is the sublimest on
the continent. With the former we shall have little to do : it is the lat-
ter which claims here our exclusive attention.

The southern part of the Plateau Province may be regarded as a vast
basin everywhere bounded by highlands, except at the southwest, where
it opens wide and passes suddenly into a region having all the charac-
teristics of the Great Basin of Nevada. The northern half of its eastern
rim consists of the Park ranges of Colorado. Its northern rim lies upon
the slopes of the Uintas. At the point where the Uintas join the
Wasatch, the boundary turns sharply to the south, and for 200 miles the
High Plateaus of Utah constitute the elevated western margin of the
Province.

It is from the summits of the High Plateaus that we gain our first
comprehensive view of those grand facts which are the principal sub-
jects of this discourse. But let me first ask the reader to endeavor to
frame some conception, however crude, of three lines, each 200 miles
long, placed in the positions of three sides of a square; the fourth side
being for the moment neglected. Upon the eastern side conceive the
Park ranges of Colorado; upon the northern, the Uintas; and upon the
western side the southern portion of the Wasatch and the High Plateaus
of Utah ; and all these highlands having altitudes ranging from 0,000 to
12,000 feet above the sea, while the included area varies from 5,000 to
7,000 feet high. The space thus partially bounded may represent the
northern part of the southern Plateau Province. Along the line re-
quired for the fourth and south side of the complete square there is no
boundary. The topography continues on beyond it to the southward,
and also widens out both west and east and overspreads an additional
area more than twice as great as that already defined. From the east-
ern crests of the High Plateaus we may obtain an instructive overlook
of the northern portion of the southern Plateau country.

The easiest line of approach is from Salt Lake City. Proceeding south
from that town along the western base of the Wasatch, we reach the
southern end of that fine range about 90 miles from Salt Lake. The
last mountain pile is .Mount Nebo, and skirting around its southern llank
we soon perceive to the southeastward a long and very lofty ridge 20 to
30 miles distant. This is the Wasatch Plateau, the northernmost mem-
ber of the group of High Plateaus. It has nothing in common with the

56 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

Wasatch Mountain range, being wholly disconnected from it and stand-
ing with a wide interval en Schelon to the southeast ward of it. The Wa-
satch Plateau presents a long, straight, horizontal summit projected
against the sky without peaks or domes, resembling somewhat the ridges

of Pennsylvania and Virginia, but on a grander scale. We perceive
along its entire western front a rapid slope, descending to the bottom of
the San Pete Valley at its foot. It is not deeply incised with ravines
and amphitheaters, nor notched with profound transverse gorges, as arc
ordinary mountain ranges, but shows a slightly diversified slope in every
part. As we draw nearer we begin to sec the attitudes of the strata
composing its mass, or, as the geologists say, its " structure." The strata
are inclined at the same angle as the slope of its flank. In the valley
below, the beds are horizontal ; as they approach the base of the plateau
they flex upwards and ascend the slope ; as they reach the summit they
flex back to horizontally. If we ascend the plateau and ride eastward
a very few miles, there suddenly breaks upon the view a vast and im-
pressive panorama. From an altitude of more than 11,000 feel the eye
can sweep a semicircle with a radius of more than 70 miles, and reach far
out into the heart of the Plateau country. We stand upon strata of Lower
Tertiary age, and beneath our feet is a precipice leaping down across the
level edges ofthe beds upon a terrace 1,200 feet below. The cliff on which
we stand stretches far northward into the hazy distance, gradually swing-
ing eastward and then southward through acourse of more than a hundred
miles, and vanishing below the horizon. It describes, as we well know,
a rude semicircle, around a center about 40 miles east of our standpoint.
At the foot of this cliff is a terrace of greatly varying width, rarely less
than 5 miles, consisting of Upper Cretaceous beds nearly but not quite
horizontal. They incline upwards towards the east at angles rarely so
great as 3°, and are soon cut off by a second cliff plunging down 1,800
feet upon Middle Cretaceous beds. This second cliff describes a semi-
circle like the first, but smaller and concentric with it. From its foot
the strata still rise gently towards the east, through a distance of about
10 miles, and are cut off as before by a third series of cliffs concentric with
the first and second. For the fourth and fifth time this process is re-
peated. In the center of these girdling walls is an elliptical area about
40 miles long and 12 to 20 miles broad, completely surrounded by mural
escarpments more than a thousand feet high.' This central spot is
called the San Rafael Swell, and it is full of interest and suggestion
to the geologist. From its central point the strata dip away in all
directions, the inclinations, however, being always very small.* This
configuration of the strata (dipping away from a central point in all
directions) is technically termed "quaquaversal."

The accompanying diagram (Plate XI) shows the relative masses and
positions ot the strata as they woukUippear in vertical sections cutting

JfhT 1 ! 10 e T rU mUrgin ° f tbe 8wdl ^i^flh^e^^t^ monoclinallle^uTes 7 '
* 7 J , mcl,nati0u 80 characteristic of tbe Plateau Country. These will be ad-
verted to berealter.

n. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

ANNUAL REPORT 1881. PL. X!.

^' Vlntfn

CaatU VnUry

.. <■- "'" '-

Sect XoAtlSirtU

i- \ -~\_ ■L'JCTLLIL " " — H

Sur< Fa/n/fl Srre'1

I , i . r ' T ' t '■

~. . — . — r— r~ r — i ' ' ' ' ' ~ — ' — "

u — , n .%.

^-^ ^r-GL^— ' •-

£3

StU&HXL CrXTfXf

Scot ~RuJi>*? firrptl

Legend

Tertu/ryr* *■ -
I.OJ-UJnU- i3&tf?< r /;w; 7i*u BE3EJ

Cretticevusdj. , L"n-cr7)/frs fr _. . J

Jurassic >x*MA Cur/jom/e RE3Q

Sections from San Pete and Sevier Vallevs across the Wasatch Monoclinal to the San Rafael SwelL

duti-on.) EROSION OF THE SAN RAFAEL DISTRICT. 57

cast and west through the Wasatch Plateau to the San Rafael Swell. It
will be observed that the lower Tertiary is found only on the summit and
western flank of the plateau. The Cretaceous extends further out, but
is at last cut off in turn ; and as lower and lower beds are exposed t o day-
light, they too are similarly cut off until the summit of the Carboniferous
is nearly or quite exposed within the swell itself. The approximate length
of the section here given is about 55 miles, and the thickness of the strata
from the summit of the Carboniferous to the top of the Lower Tertiary is
nearly 11,000 feet.

The geologist who becomes aware through observation of the general
facts thus set forth quickly reaches the following conclusion : The beds
which are successively terminated in the terrace cliffs once reached fur-
ther eastward, and in all probability every one of them extended in full
volume and without a break entirely over the locus of the swell to
regions far beyond it. Upon the eastern side of the swell, and at vary-
ing distances from it, the missing strata reappear in inverse order,
with terminal cliffs facing the westward. From the intervening space
they have been swept away by erosion.

In restricted localities of a few square miles, in a river valley, in the
open glades of a hill-country, the most unscientific observer maybe easily
convinced that the waste of thousands of years has broken the continuity
of the strata and quarried away large masses of rock. But in the wide
expanse before us even the mind of the geologist may falter before
accepting a conclusion so portentous. The magnitude of the work is
oppressive, and cautious philosophers are reluctant to take up and carry
the burden of unusually large figures. They prefer to cast about in order
to see whether some easier conclusion may not be discovered. The one
already stated is to the effect that a body of strata more than 10,000 feet
thick and more than 500 square miles in area have been swept off from
the surface of the swell ; that nearly 9,000 feet have been removed from a
much larger annular space around it; 7,000 feet from a still larger and
remoter space; and so on with expanding annuli, from which succes-
sively decreasing amounts have been denuded. It is needless to define
iust here the limits of the denuded region, even if it were possible. It
is sufficient to say that its extent is much more than 10,001) square miles,
and that the thickness of the strata removed varies from a few hundreds
to more than 10,000 feet. Xor does the conclusion stop here. The San
Rafael region is only one of a considerable number of the subdivisions of
the Plateau Province where the same enormous extent of erosion has
t aken place. It is not the largest of those subdivisions, nor is the thick-
ness of the removed strata the greatest there. It is merely an example,
and whatsoever it reveals in regard to erosion is but a group of events
common to the entire southern province with its vast area of nearly
100,000 square miles. I have selected it for discussion because its array
of facts in evidence is more easily handled and can be more lucidly pre-
sented than those of the other subdivisions. Let us, then, examine in

58 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

detail the arguments upon which this deduction o!' a great denudation

is based.

If we stand before one of the great marginal el ills which hound the
several terraces, we shall speedily detect abundant evidence that time
and the elements are slowly robbing its face of the materials which com-
pose its mass. Fragments have spawled off and fallen, and they now
lie at its base in great quantities, forming a talus. Oliffand talus alike are
seamed and scored with rain-gullies, and if we are fortunate enough to
observe the effects of a shower we shall see the waters trickling, spout-
ing, or rushing down through every seam and gully, carrying sand, mud,
and small fragments with which they a re charged to their utmost capacity.
The meaning of this is that the oliff is wasting away, and its locus
through the ages is farther and farther back. This backward movement
of the line of frontage by slow waste is very happily named by Powell
the Recession of Cliffs.

It may seem at first as if the rate of recession must be so exceedingly
slow that when we are asked to consider the possibility of a recession ot
thirty or forty miles the argument would break down under the weight
of its time-factor. But it *ill be shown hereafter that in the total pro-
cess of denudation the rate of recession is rapid enough to satisfy the
temper of such geologists as may be parsimonious or even very stingy
in their allowances of time. It is sufficient here to advert to the very
obvious fact that the cliffs are receding, and that at some former geo
logical period they once stood nearer the center of the denuded district
> T ow, it is sufficiently obvious that if we allow the imagination to range
back indefinitely into the past and reverse the process of recession, re-
storing the material which has been denuded, the continuity of argument
will at length bring us to an epoch in which the cliffs which now face the
center of the San Rafael Swell came together, and the strata which those
cliffs now terminate stretched unbroken from west to east across the
whole width of the Plateau Province. It is only a question of time and
continuity of the process. The geologist may, however, raise a very
pertinent inquiry. Admitting that the cliff'-bound strata once reached
out in advance of their present limits, may they not have grown thinner
as they approached the center; may they not have attenuated rapidly
so that their former thickness over the swell was but a small fraction of
the aggregate thickness disclosed in the present escarpments .' Ma v not
the higher beds have thinned out and disappeared entirely a few miles
from their present boundaries? In all other well-studied regions it is a
general and almost universal rule that the strata varv greatly in thick-
ness when traced from place to place, and attenuate as they extend away
from their shore-lines. May they not have done so here?

Answering the questions directly, it may be said that the Permian
Trias, and Cretaceous certainly did not grow perceptiblv thinner as thev
approached the center of denudation. The Jurassic did thin out quite
notably from west to east, and it is possible that the Tertiary may have

ovrnm ) a EVIDENCES OF EROSION. f>9

thinned a little; but this loss of thickness in the Jurassic and Tertiary
has been abundantly discounted in the estimate given of the mass of
strata denuded. As regards the general rule that strata vary greatly
in thickness, it may be stated that the Plateau country is a remarkable
exception to it. One of the most striking features in its stratigraphy is
the wonderful persistency with which its formations maintain their vol-
umes and lithological features over great areas. In this respect the
province has no parallel, not even in the calm and undisturbed terrains
of the Mississippi Valley.

Further support of this conclusion may be found by reverting to the
section (Plate XI). On the eastern side of the swell the section shows
a great monoclinal flexure where the strata extending eastward rapidly
bend downward and subsequently flex back to horizontality. Before this
flexure began to form, the Cretaceous strata had already been deposited.
Possibly, also, the Tertiary had been laid down, but of this we are not
as yet certain. But we know that it was formed after the Cretaceous
age, for the strata abundantly betray it. If we could bend back the
strata now inclined upward in that flexure, we should have a wall about
8,000 feet high or more, looking down from the east upon the central
amphitheater, and in that wall would appear the broken edges of the
Permian and Mesozoic beds, though the upper part of the Cretaceous
and Tertiary would be wanting at the summit. Thus nearly four-fifths
of the denuded strata appear upon the eastern side of the swell, in very
close proximity to it, and the remainder make their appearance at vary-
ing distances beyond. There is no appreciable loss of volume in the
exposed beds of the monocline as compared with the corresponding beds
to the westward.

But we may with advantage pursue the task of restoring the beds to
the position they held during the period of their deposition by straight-
ening out or bending back the strata in those parts where they have
been tilted and flexed since their accumulation. This is readily done
here. They were deposited originally in layers which were quite hori-
zontal. We know this by reasoning upon the following facts. Prom
the summit of the Permian, and I think we may say quite confidently
from the summit of the Carboniferous upwards, the whole series was
deposited in very shallow waters. The evidence of this is overwhelm-
ing. We find proof that the surfaces of deposition throughout Mcsoxoie
time oscillated repeatedly a little below and a little above sea-level.
The cross-bedded sandstones of the Trias and Jura, the sandy shales
wonderfully ripple-marked, the occurrence of bands containing the silic-
ieifled remains of forest trees, the occasional recurrence of contacts
showing "unconformity by erosion" without any unconformity of dip,*
the occurrence of brackish-water types of mollusca in the Jurassic, the

* There are throughout the scries numerous instances of heds resting upon surfaces
slightly eroded and channeled by streams without any discrepancy of dip in the
apposed heds.

(]0 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

lignites, fossil leaves, and carbonaceous shales oft he whole Cretaceous
system, the brackish-water fossils of the lowest Tertiary, leave no doubt
as to the verity of the foregoing inference. The final restoration, then,
of the strata to their original positions leaves them horizontal.*

If we draw a section of the strata restored to horizontality, we shall
find that the strata now remaining require, in order to perfect their con-
tinuity, the restitution of large masses fully equal to those which we have
inferred to have been swept away by erosion. Any hesitation to do
this would leave us without resource. Any other hypothesis, so far as
lean conceive, would be not only without support in the l'acts pre-
sented, but in opposition to their entire tenor and purport.

The geologist who is familiar through long lield-study with the ph\ s
ical problems presented in the West would not need further argument
to become satisfied of the reality of the great erosion here inferred.
Perhaps he would consider that too much has been said in support of
it already; especially since the subject of this paper is not the San
Rafael but the Grand Canon district. But I have devoted so much dis-
cussion to the San Rafael district because it is a type of a congeries of
districts which make up the Plateau Province, and because it exemplifies
in the most intelligible, compact, and complete manner the broad facts
and laws which are to engage our attention hereafter. These facta and
laws apply to the Grand Canon district; but to take the facts there
presented and arrange them in a clear view before the mind of one who
has never visited that region, and make them definite and convincing,
would be extremely difficult without preparatory exercises on problems
similar in kind but simpler iii form. For this reason 1 propose, before
leaving the San Rafael district, to bring out another category of facts
which it exemplifies. They involve a generalization very interesting in
itself, and of the greatest utility in solving many problems presented in
all parts of the Plateau country. This generalization— or law in the
sense of an observed order of facts— may be called the Persistence oj
Rivers.

The rivers of the Atlantic States, from the Hudson southward, cut
through the Appalachian ridges by narrow gorges, or gaps, which seem
to have beeu quarried out for the purpoes. Geology, however, does not

*It would bo very instructive, if space permitted, to elaborate this discussion of the
original horizontality, and I am tempted to point out in the hastiest manner some
obvious consequences of the deduction. It appears that if this deduction be true
the deposits must have settled or subsided as rapidly (iu the long run) as they wen
accumulated. The surface of deposition appears never to have varied much from sea
level. But the total accumulation of Permian, Mesozoir, and Tertiarv beds was nearly
11,000 feet, and when the deposition ended (supposing that it ended in the Middle
Eocene, though I think it more probably continued here until the close of the Eocene)
the Permian must have sunken more than two miles below sea-level. The gradual sub-
sidence of largo bodies of sediment as they accumulate in strata is a fact now generally
recognized, and is of universal application. That it is caused by the gross weight of
the enormous masses of deposited material sinking into the yielding earth seems a
most natural explanation.

nuTTox.)

PERSISTENCE OF RIVERS. fil

take account of "purposes" or "design," but seeks its explanations in
11 natural " causes alone. It asks by what natural processes were those
gorges made?

The answer it finds is, that the rivers themselves scoured them out,
and that secular decay has widened them somewhat. A reader not
versed in geology might be led to ask a further question. How can a
river attack a mountain wall, or even a gentle declivity, and quarry
though it a pathway giving a continuous descent for the flow of its
waters ? The reply is that no river ever does that. To understand how
it all came about we must go back to the beginning. The rivers were
born with the country itself. The land emerged from the sea; and
when it emerged the rains or melting snow sought whatever channels
were determined by the slight inequalities of the newly-risen surface
and flowed seawards. These lofty ridges, gashed with noble ravines,
had then no existence. The rivers are older than the mountains. As
time ran on the mountains grew upward, athwart the courses of the
streams. But a flowing river has a power to fight for and maintain its
right of way, which becomes apparent only when we have carefully
studied and analyzed it. This power is inherent in the descent of its
waters— is literal water-power. The weapons or tools are thesand, gravel,
and silt which the waters carry, and which act after the manner of a
sand-blast, except that in the sand-blast the grit is impelled by air or
steam, while in the river it is impelled by water. This power, inherent
in the fall, increases rapidly as the fall increases. When the declivity
is feeble the power to grind down the channel— to "corrade," as Pow-
ell terms it— is correspondingly feeble, or even annihilated. When a
barrier like a ridge rises across the track of a stream the declivity is
increased at that point. Increased velocity and corrasivo power is at
once developed in the stream, and it cuts down the barrier. Perhaps
a lake may be formed above the barrier, but its outlet will be cut down
and the lake drained.

In a low country the slopes are, with rare exceptions, feeble, and this
corrasive power by which the stream maintains its locus is in such conn
tries correspondingly feeble. Here we may expect to find many cases
where streams have been deflected largely from their courses; but in a
high country the reverse is the case. In a region newly risen from the
waters the positions of the streams may be very inconstant; but as the
elevation increases they gradually fasten their grip upon the land and
hold it.

It would be difficult to point out an instance where a great river has
ever existed under conditions more favorable to stability of position
than those of the Colorado and its tributaries. Since the epoch when
it began to flow it has been situated in a rising area. Its springs and
rills have been among high mountains, and its slope since the earliest
period of its history has always been great. The relations of its larger ^
tributaries have, in these respects, been the same; and indeed the river

U. S. GEOLOGICAL SVRVETt'.

ANNUAL HKI'Oh'T issi. PL. XII.

■ -

HORSESHOE CANON, GREEN RIVER.
From l'uwi-ll's Kxploilitiou oi tht Colorado Kiver.

g2 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

audits tributaries have been a system, and not a mere aggregate; for l be
latter are dependent upon and responsive to the physical conditions of

the former. And now we come to the point. The Colorado and its tribu-
taries run to-day just where they ran after the region emerged from the
waters. Since that time mountains and plateaus have risen across their
tracks,' whose present summits mark less than half their total amounts
of uplift. The rivers have cleft them to their foundations.

The Green River, passing the Pacific Railway, enters the Uinta plat-
form by the Flaming Gorge, and after reaching the heart of the chain
turns eastward parallel to its axis for 30 miles, and then southward,
cutting its way out by the splendid caiion of Lodore. Then following
the base of the range for a few miles a strange caprice seizes it. Not
satisfied with the terrible gash it has inflicted upon this noble chain, it
darts at it viciously once more, and entering it, cuts a horseshoe canon
in its flank :>,700 feet deep, and emerges near the point of entrance;
thenceforward, through a tortuous course of 300 'miles, it flows south-
ward through gently inclined terraces, which rise slowly as the river
descends. Along this stretch it runs almost constantly against the
dip of the beds, cutting through one after another, beginning with the
Upper Eocene until its channel is sunk deep in the Carboniferous.
Further down, the Kaibab Plateau rose up to contest its passage, and a
chasm 5,000 to 0,000 feet deep is the result. It is needless to multiply
instances; the whole province is a vast category of instances of river
channels catting through plateaus, mesas, and terraces where the
strata-dip up stream. The courses of the canons are everywhere laid
independently of the topographical inequalities, whether these inequal-
ities be due to the broader features of land sculpture or to displacement
and unequal uplifting. On the north and west side of the Colorado the
tributaries generally run counter to the structural slopes; on the east
and south sides, they ran more nearly with them.

It is clear then that the structural deformations of the surface, the
uplifts and downthrows had nothing to do with determining the present
distribution of the plateau drainage. The rivers are where they are, in
spite of them. As irregularities rose up, the streams turned neither to
the right nor to the left, but cut their way through in the same old
places. The process may be illustrated by a feeble analogy with the
saw-mill. The river is the saw and the rising strata are the timber which
is fed against it. The saw-log moves while the saw vibrates in its place.
The river holds its place as rigidly, and the rising strata are dissevered
by its ceaseless wear. What, then, did determine the situations of
the present drainage channels? The answer is that they were deter-
mined by the configuration of the surface existing at, or very soon after,
the epoch of emergence. Then, surely, the water-courses ran in con-
formity with the burface of the uppermost (Tertiary) stratum. Soon
afterwards that surface began to be deformed by unequal displace-
ment, but the rivers had fastened themselves to their places and have
ever since refused to be diverted.

dottoh.J GENERAL METHODS OF EROSION. 63

This theorem is of great utility in the study of the Plateau Province, for
it throws light upon many problems which would otherwise be obscure.
The course of a river is the index of the slope, and, to a great extent,
the configuration of the primitive unmodified surface of a tract. It be-
trays the amount of tilting or flexing which the strata have undergone,
and also conveys information as to the amount of strata which have
been denuded. This information, however, is in many cases incomplete,
but when placed in relation with other facts it frequently becomes con-
clusive. The application of the theorem to the San Rafael district is a
beautiful instance of its validity.

Across the San Rafael Swell extend two river channels, one crossing
it near the northern and the other near the southern end. They head
in the High Plateaus, and pass through the successive terraces in deep
canons; then crossing the swell, enter the high cliffs on the eastern side
and How on. The northern stream— the San Rafael River— ultimately
joins the Green River; the southern one— Curtis Creek— enters the Fre-
mont River, a tributary of the Colorado. A glance at the map and an
interpretation of the topography as expressed by the contours will
quickly show that these streams are quite independent of the existing
topography and could not have had their situations determined by it.
They must have been laid out upon some ancient surface differing
widely from the present. To find that surface is not difficult. It must
have had a continuous descent, though doubtless of slight declivity,
from the western margin of the province to the line of the Green and
Colorado Rivers. We shall obtain precisely that surface configuration
by reducing or bending back the flexures, and depressing the tilted
strata until the Cretaceous beds are everywhere horizontal, and then
filling up the gaps made in the continuity of the strata by erosion.
Thus we shall reach, by argument from the persistence of rivers, the
same conclusion which we reached by studying the effects of the reces.
sion of cliffs, and by the independent study of the displacements.

The example of erosion thus given by the San Rafael Swell illustrates,
as a sharply defined type, the denudation of the Plateau Province. The
thickness of the strata removed varies greatly in different portions. In
the High Plateaus it has amounted to only a few hundred feet. In large
areas it amounts to two or three thousand feet and in others of consid-
erable extent it reaches more than 10,000 feet. Preliminary compari-
sons of known facts derived from nearly the entire extent of the southern
province lead to the conclusion that on the average 5,500 to 0,000 feet of
strata have been removed from its entire expanse. Our knowledge of
the geology of some portions of it is at present very imperfect. Still,
enough is known to justify us in believing that this summary estimate
will not be much affected by future investigation.

We may for special purposes of convenience regard the province as
consisting of districts or spots of maximum erosion separated from each
other by high mesas or dividing platforms where erosion has been at its

g 4 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

minimum. The San Rafael district may be regarded as one of these
areas of which the central part is an area of maximuin erosion while its
peripheral parts are areas of minimum erosion. The Grand Canon dis-
trict is another, and there are still others whirl, we Deed not here specify.

Before concluding the introductory part of this paper it will be desir-
able to recite briefly the succession of geological events which the study
of the region has thus far brought to light, selecting only such as will
hereafter be of special utility.

Throughout the great Carboniferous age the entire area ot the I lateau
Province was submerged beneath the ocean. Deposition of strata went
on continuously. The thickness of the strata accumulated m that age
appears to have varied greatly, and the deposits were laid down uncon-
formable over the surface of a country which had been ravaged by a
great erosion. Such exposures of the Carboniferous as now exist, how-
ever, exhibit for the most part a remarkable evenness of stratification.
In the interior spaces of the province the beds are either horizontal, or
if disturbed, give full evidence that the disturbances took place long
after their deposition. The close of this age evidently left a subaqueous
surface, which was exceedingly fiat, and, except around the borders of
the province, quite free, so far as we now know, from any appreciable
inequalities.

The thickness of the Carboniferous system is from 4,500 to 5,000 feet
in the interior of the province, but around its borders, and in the Uinta
Mountains, it is sometimes found in far greater volume. Its strata
consist of impure limestones, occasionally of enormous thickness in
the individual beds, and alternating with fine-grained homogeneous
sandstones. Extensive beds of gypsum also occur.

After the Carboniferous came the Permian age, in which were laid
down from 800 to 1,500 feet of sandy shales. The stratification was won
derfully even and everywhere horizontal. The Permian beds are often
ripple-marked and betray many evidences that they accumulated in shal-
low waters. Among these evidences are the appearance at several hori-
zons of indications that for a time the sea-bottom was laid bare by the
recession of the waters, or by the elevation of the platform itself; for
we may discern evidences of slight erosion at the contacts of tho beds.
But the horizontally of the beds appears never to have been notably
disturbed.

The same state of affairs continued through the Trias. There, too,
we find evidence of alternations of emergence and submergence in the
shape of slight unconformities by erosion, and in the occurrence of ex-
tensive remains of silicified forests. The Triassic series is composed
almost wholly of sandstones, the only calcareous matter being thin seams
of gypsum. The sandstone beds are very numerous and often shaly.
They are usually of no great thickness individually, but there is one
very notable member of which we shall see more when we come to view
the Vermilion Cliffs.

DUTTON.

THE CLOSE OF THE CRETACEOUS. 85

Directly upon the Trias rests the Jurassic. A wonderful bed of sand-
stone 800 to 1,200 feet thick, and very white and sugary iu color repre-
sents the principal part of this series. It is a very notable formation
because of its remarkable homogeneity, the persistent way in which it
preserves its lithological characters through great distances, and the
absence of divisional planes of stratification— the mass being solid from
top to bottom. But most striking of all is its wonderful cross-bedding,
far surpassing in beauty, extent, and systematic character, any similar
phenomenon elsewhere, with which I am acquainted. The summit of
the Jurassic suddenly changes to calcareous and sandy shales, abound-
ing in fossils. This series, as well as the Trias, appears to have been
laid down horizontally in shallow waters.

Next comes the Cretaceous system— a mass of yellow sandstones with
clayey and marly shales, aggregating from 4,000 to 5,000 feet thick. In
this series we find an abundance of plant remains, many beds of good
coal, and much carbonaceous shale. The conditions during the Creta-
ceous appear to have been quite similar to those which prevailed in the
Appalachian region during the Carboniferous. Perhaps the conditions
which attended and rendered possible the accumulation of coal are not
sufficiently well understood to enable us to say confidently just what
they were, but there seems to be a general agreement that they involved
aflat, low, moist country lying almost exactly at mean sea-level, and sub
ject to alternate emergence and submergence. No other supposition
seems to meet the requirements of the case, or to be capable of explain-
ing how a mass of strata could be so accumulated, consisting of alter-
nations of thin seams of coal and carbonaceous shale with layers of sand
stone containing marine fossils.

We have now the following remarkable state of affairs. From the
close of the Carboniferous to the close of the Cretaceous there is strong
evidence that the surface of deposition was always very near to sea-
level, sometimes a few feet above it, but for the most part a little below
it. And yet in the interval about 9,000 feet of strata accumulated with
remarkable uniformity over the entire province, and always in a hori-
zontal position. From this it necessarily follows that the mass of mate-
rial thus deposited sank or "subsided" at a rate which, in the long run,
was exactly or sensibly equal to the rate of deposition.

At the close of the Cretaceous we find evidence that the long calm
which had characterized the action of the physical processes was in-
vaded. Some extensive disturbances took place, resulting at some
places in the dislocation and flexing of the strata, and the elevation of
some portions of the region to considerable altitudes. Erosion at once-
attacked the uplifted portio s, and around the borders of the province
we find numerous localities, usually not very extensive, which were
greatly devastated. At some of these places the entire local Cretaceous
series was denuded, and even a portion of the Jurassic; and the Tertiary
is seen lying upon the Jurassic and across the beveled edges of the
5 G A

gg OKAND CANON DISTEICT.

flex ed Cretaceous .,a = ^ J^ti -^g^

e ™l land, or a little within, Its marginal portions.
ThoTwt iH-runl of deposition was .narked by the accumulation the
Eocene td'hieh form soon a striking feature in the stradgraphy o

LocuieLKCLs, plateau countrv. Around the southern Hanks

the peripheral parts ot the L latum country,
of the Uintas their aggregate thickness exceeds 5,<XK u< t, bits
wa «l the upper members disappear, and 80 miles north ot the Grand
non only about 1.000 to 1,200 feet, representing the lowest port .on oi
hl^nak, their appease, It is highly probable that then. Id,
and upper portions of the Eocene W ere never deposited there, But he

tow J beds, most probably, once covered the entire province, wh.lo the,
middle and late Eoeenewere confined to its more northerly portions
The lowest members were deposited in brackish water, as their loss. Is
amply attest; but in the succeeding beds the fossil forms are ent.rel.v
those which live in fresh water. From that epoch to the present tune
there has been no recurrence of marine conditions.

We now reach a turning point in the history of this region, iliat
long continuance of marine conditions lasting from the beginning ot
Carboniferous time to the close of the Cretaceous came gradually to an
end. The waters became brackish and then fresh. During the preva-
lenceof the marine condition it seems to be a necessary conclusion that
the waters which covered it had abundant access to the ocean. Whether
its waters were wide open to the ocean, like the Gulf of Mexico or Hud-
son's Bay, or whether they formed a broad expanse, with a compar-
atively narrow outlet, like the Mediterranean, we do not know, and it
would be useless to conjecture at present. At all events the communi-
cation was sufficiently free to maintain a degree of saltness suitable to
the existence of molluscan forms of the ordinary marine types. When
i he waters became brackish, we infer that the straits became greatly
narrowed; when they became quite fresh, we infer that the access of the
ocean to the area was wholly shut off, and that the water brought by
the rivers and rains merely outflowed, and the region became an inland
lake of vast proportions. For the deposition still went on. Through
Eocene time from 1,000 to 5,000 feet of lacustrine beds, containing an
abundance of fresh-water fossils, were deposited. Among them are also
found layers of coal and carbonaceous shales, and sandstones thickly
imprinted with the traces of arboreal vegetation.

But at length the deposition of lacustrine strata ceased ; not, however,
at one and the same time in all parts of the province. The evidence indi-
cates that in the southern and southwestern portions it stopped after
about one-fourth or one-third of the Eocene horizons had been laid down.
In the central portions it appears to have ceased after about one-half
to two-thirds of those horizons had been deposited. In the northern
portions, in the vicinity of the Uintas, the entire system of Eocene

duttox.] EROSION IN MIOCENE TIME. 67

strata is found in immense volume. These facts lead OS to infer 1 hat
the great Eocene lake, soon after its waters became quite fresh, began
to shrink its area, and that its bottom became through a slow pro-
gression dry land. The southern and southwestern portions were the
first to emerge; then the middle portions; the lake gradually ret i acting
its boundary to the northward, until in the latter part of the Eocene it.
occupied a greatly diminished area In the vicinity of the San Rafael
country and the southern base of the Uinta Mountains. At the close
of the Eocene this remnant of the lake also disappeared.

We now reach another turning point in the history of the region.
Hitherto and for an immense stretch of geological time it had been an
area of deposition and of subsidence. It now became an area of eleva-
tion and denudation, and these processes have been in operation ever
since. In the periods of deposition and subsidence, from the Carbo-
niferous to the Eocene, both inclusive, the thickness of the strata accu-
mulated varied from 14,000 to 20,000 feet, and the subsidence of the base
of the Carboniferous was of nearly equal extent. In the periods of ele-
vation and denudation these vast masses of strata rose bodily up again;
the amount of elevation varying according to locality from 0,000 to 18,000
feet. The havoc wrought by erosion has been, as already shown, stu-
pendous ; the thickness of strata removed exceeding 10,000 feet in
some considerable areas, and averaging probably 5,500 to (5,000 feet over
the entire province.

The points which it is desirable to notice in this chapter concerning
the progress of the Tertiary and Quaternary erosion of the province,
are few and of the broadest nature. In truth it is necessary to speak
very guardedly. For while the most general features of the work have
left well-marked traces which can be interpreted, yet when we come to
details the vast erosion has swept away so much of its mass that a large
portion of the evidence of the details has vanished with the rocks. There
is reason to believe that the greater part of the denudation was accom-
plished in Miocene time. This was a period of slow but continuous up-
lifting, reaching a great amount in the aggregate, and it was most prob-
ably also a period of rapid erosion. The uplifting, however, was on-
equal in the different parts of the province. The comparatively even
floor of the old lake was deformed by broad swells and plateaus rising
above the surrounding country. As we shall see hereafter, the action
of the denuding agents is much more vigorous and efficient upon the
higher than upon the lower parts of a region; and consequently these
upswellings at once became the objects of special attention from the de-
stroying forces and were wasted more rapidly than the lower regions
around them. Here were formed centers or short limited axes, from
which erosion proceeded radially outwards, and the strata rising gently
towards them from all directions were beveled off. Thus were formed
those areas of maximum erosion, already spoken of, and of which the
San Rafael Swell is the most perfect and simplest type.

68 GRAND CANON DISTEIOT.

We have also reason to believe that the climate of the Miocene was
moist and subtropical, conditions favorable under the circumstances to
a rapid rate of erosion. We do not indeed find the proof of this in the
province itself, for it contains no Miocene strata or fossils; but in sur-
rounding regions the strata and fossils of that age are found in abun-
dance, and they clearly indicate that the climate had that character ; and
it would be quite untenable to suppose that so limited a tract as the Pla
teau Province was an anomaly in respect to the climate of the broader
regions of which it is a part, unless special reasous for it could be ad-
duced. I know of no such special reasons. But near the close of the
Miocene, or not long thereafter, the climate of almost the entire West
underwent a change, becoming arid, as it is at present. In this change
the Plateau country no doubt shared. The more important results of
the Pliocene and Quaternary erosion, however, will be among the prin-
cipal themes of the following chapters.

CHAPTER IT.

GEOGRAPHY OF THE GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

The Grand Canon District— the region draining into the Grand and
Marble Canons— is the westernmost division of the Plateau Province.
Nearly four-fifths of its area are situated in Northern Arizona. The
remaining fifth is situated in Southern Utah. Let us turn our attention
for a moment to the portion situated in Utah. It consists of a series of
terraces quite similar to those which we have already seen descending
from the summit of the Wasatch Plateau to the San Rafael Swell like a
colossal stairway. At the top of the stairs are the broad and lofty plat-
forms of the High Plateaus of Utah ; at the bottom is the inner expanse
of the Grand Cafion District, The summits of the High Plateaus are
beds of Lower Eocene age. Descending southward we cross, step by
step, the terminal edges of the entire Mesozoic system and the Permian,
and when we reach the inner floor of the Grand Canon District we find
that it consists of the summit beds of the Carboniferous series patched
here and there with lading remnants of the Permian.

Par beyond the remotest limits of vision stretches the great expanse
of Upper Carboniferous beds, flecked with Permian outliers, and rising
or falling to form the broader inequalities of level in the surface of the
region. The terraces of Southern Utah are the border land between the
Hi<di Plateaus on the north and the Carboniferous platform of the Grand
Canon on the south, and may be regarded as the appanage of either
district. Their nature and meaning may become clearer by glancing a
moment at the District of the High Plateaus.

Let us conceive a right-angled triangle in which the acutest angle is
regarded as the apex and the shortest side as the base. Place the apex
about 25 miles east of Mount Nebo, the great mountain which marks
the southern end of the true Wasatch Range; place the right angle 170
or 180 miles due south of the apex, and the other acute angle about 100
to 110 miles due west of the right angle. This figure would include
pretty nearly all of the summit areas of the High Plateaus. Consider
now the north-and-south side reaching from the apex to the right angle.
It runs along the crest lines and terraces which look down eastwardly
upon the San Rafael district and upon other enormously eroded districts
further south. The base reaching westward from the right angle to the
other acute angle runs among the terraces which descend from the
southern termini of the High Plateaus to the Grand Canon District,
The hypothenusc looks northwestward over a portion of the Basin Pro-
vince. The High Plateaus themselves are large remnants of Mesozoic

70 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

and Tertiary strata which have been spared in the enormous denudation
which has eaten out the heart of the Plateau Province. Their presei ra-
tion has been largely due to extensive outpours of lavas, which have
overspread most of their summits, and the energy of the eroding agencies
has there spent itself upon the more obdurate materials of volcanic
origin.

Starting from the right angle and reaching out south-southeast is
a rather lofty mass, named the Kaiparowits Plateau. It reaches to
the Colorado River, where it is cleft asunder by the mighty gorge of the
(ilen Cailon, but resumes its course on the other side, extending into
Arizona, where it spreads out. It is composed of Cretaceous strata. Its
western Hank forms a part of the eastern boundary of the Grand ( 'anon,
or more restrict edly of the Marble Cafion, district. Here again is the
same old arrangement — terraces with their marginal dill's rising from
the Carboniferous platform step by step to the Middle Cretaceous — the
cliffs all looking westward over the great region from which the former
extensions of the strata they terminate have been swept away.

Thus we may note that the northern and eastern boundaries of the
Grand Cafion District are cliff-bound terraces. Crossing the district
either longitudinally from north to south, or transversely from east to
west, we find as we approach the southern or western border that the
Carboniferous platform ascends very gradually. There are broad and
feebly marked (sometimes well marked) undulations, or ups and downs;
but, on the whole, the country gains in altitude as we approach its
western and southern limits. At last it terminates in a giant wall
plunging down thousands of feet to the platform of a country quite sim-
ilar to that of the Great Basin of Nevada. Those who have traveled on
the Central Pacific Railway will recall the features of that very desolate
region which lies between Great Salt Lake and the Sierra Nevada; and
all those features are repeated and their desolation intensified in the
dreadful region which lies west and south of the Grand Cafion District.
The district may be conveniently divided into parts. The northern-
most portion is the area comprising the southern terraces of the High
Plateaus. A description of these sufficient for preliminary purposes has
already been given. At the foot of these ten aces stretches away to the
southward the great Carboniferous platform of the heart of the district.
That portion of the platform which lies north of the Colorado River may
be subdivided into five distinct plateaus. Naming them in regular
order from west to east, they are: 1, the Sheavwits; L>, the Uinkaret; 3,
the Kanab; 4, the Kaibab; 5, the Paria. These five plateaus are sepa-
rated from each other by natural boundaries, which are for the most
part quite distinct. These boundaries are great faults or dislocations of
the main platform, which have produced cliffs by hoisting the platform
on one side of the fault line or dropping it on the other. To show how
these dislocations have affected the topography, the reader is referred
to the east and west section delineated in the accompanying dia-

U. .s - . GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

ANNUAL REPORT 1881. PL. XIII.

rkanuiii PWeau.

PanactTeap

BB '■• -:.-r .-.^.-^;^^ : ------^f

^ 5 BB .r^55teteftfe^Pgg^ig^^^ ^^^^i^ afggg^S^^

NilU'li'l.

\ i-rmilion C'liff.s.

* — -. i ■ ■ ■ ■ ' ' ■ ' ' '" " ' '

. • •

s^gssBBSs

rri: '

nirz

rmnir;ini)'i.l\aiiiilil)iM:;.::i

j£S^EES^pSEx=i

- ■ ~-

S^

'-■'

SE^p

3d ii

■- u i ' r r- k'-i'V-I "q

e\ tmian. Silurian 8> AivIiumh unconformable Ic (arbonifeiwis

V: "ilcnal nf Ihirlv
mill's inwliiflilln' Mrata
ore horizontal.

MLSilqnm

Eocene

m.

Cretaceous

.

S3 . Jura

Trias

Per mi mi

Carbomferoui

v-;r -T~i Volcanic

Horizontal and Vertical Scale

I ■ i t . 1 i_i_.

tttcoft'

S.H.B<rffuh. Dtl.

Section from north to south across the grand canon district.

dotkw.] DIVISIONS OF THE GRAND CANON. 71

gram. (PJ. X11J.) Immediately south of the Paria Plateau extends the
Marble Canon, with a south westward course. Directly across the re-
maining four plateaus winds the Grand Canon of the Colorado. South
of tlu' river is a vast expanse of nearly flat surface, but little diversified,
called the Colorado Plateau. Upon its southern borders rise abruptly
a group of great volcanic piles called the San Francisco Mountains, the
largest or dominant cone being of an impressive order of magnitude.
There are still other portions beyond, but the entire region south of the
Colorado has been reconnoitered rather than surveyed; and though we
have a general knowledge of pretty nearly the whole of it, our knowl-
edge of details is not as yet precise.

The entire expanse of the Grand Canon platform within the terraces
consists of a flat surface, interrupted at wide intervals by cliffs or sharp
flexures produced by the great displacements which traverse the land in
a prevailing north to south direction.* On the whole, it is a smooth
country in comparison with the other districts of the Plateau Province.
It is not dissected or honeycombed by the ramifications of innumerable
side gorges, as is the case with most of the other districts, for the Grand
Canon has on the north side only one lateral or tributary canon of any
considerable length, and this tributary has but few branches. In truth,
one of its remarkable features is the paucity of lateral chasms. The
southern side is not more diversified than the northern, and I think we
may say that it is somewhat less so. Between the great cliffs of dis-
placement and between the foot of the terraces and the brink of the
chasm the country is not more uneven than the Great Plains of Western
Nebraska and Kansas, and not much more so than Indiana and Illinois.
But the traveler is seldom out of sight of the palisades reared at the
fault-lines, or of the gigantic and gorgeously colored walls which bound
the terraces of the High Plateaus.

The Grand Canon will be described at some length in subsequent
chapters, llere will be noted only those more general features which
may be made to appear on the map. It crosses transversely the four
western plateaus of the district, while the Marble Canon traverses the
eastern or fifth plateau. The two canons are only nominally separated,
for there is no jrap between them. The Marble Canon begins at the
base of the eastern terraces. The Colorado River, after traversing the
central mesas of the Plateau country in a series of profound chasms, at
length emerges from the Echo Cliffs of Triassic and Permian age. Here
for an instant the river is in comparatively open country. But within
a mile or two it begins to sink another chasm in the Carboniferous
rocks, and in the course of Co miles the depth steadily increases until
it becomes about 3,500 to 4,000 feet. This is the Marble Canon. It is

*It will be noted here that (litis may he produced (1) hy faults lifting the country
on one side of the fault-line or depressing it on the other; (2) hy the denudation of
the strata in front ofthecliff. The former are called Clijficf Displacement; the latter,
Cliff* of Erosion.

72 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

a gorge of very simple form, and its width is about twice as great as its
depth. Its course is at first southwest, but gradually deflects to the
southward. Its lower end is arbitrarily fixed at the junction of the
Little Colorado or Colorado Chiquito, a stream coming in from (he
southeast and entering by a lateral chasm as deep as the main gorge
itself. Below this junction the river turns westward, the walls grow-
rapidly higher, the great chasm widens out to six or eight times its
width in the Marble Canon, and the valley of the river is filled with
buttes as large as mountains and wonderfully sculptured. Here the
river enters the Kaibab, and its walls soon attain the altitude of about
0,000 feet. Alter a tortuous course of sixty miles in a prevailing north-
west direction the river passes out of the Kaibab and at once changes
its trend to west southwest. It passes without a break from the Kai-
bab to the Kanab Plateau. Here its depth diminishes to about 5,000
feet and its topography changes in character, becoming more simple.
Preserving its new features and the direction of its course throughout
the Kanab and Uinkaret plateaus, it at length crosses the Hurricane
fault where the whole platform of the country suddenly drops more than
a thousand feet, correspondingly diminishing the height of the walls.
But the lost altitude is steadily and rather rapidly regained as the river
enters the Sheavwits Plateau. Soon after crossing the fault the river
turns abruptly to the south, and after describing a great curve in the
heart of the Sheavwits platform it turns northwestward again. The
great chasm suddenly terminates in the face of the giant wall which
forms the western boundary of the Sheavwits Plateau. Here the river
emerges through a mighty gateway a mile in depth, and is almost in
open country, its banks dropping at once to altitudes of only a few hun-
dred feet. This is the western bound, not only of the Grand Canon Dis-
trict, but of the Plateau Province itself. Thenceforth the course of the
Colorado to the ocean is through and across that dismal, torrid sierra
region, which is the southward extension of the features of the Great
Basin.

For convenience of discussion the Grand Canon is divided into four
divisions, (1) the Kaibab, (2) the Kanab, (3) the Uinkaret, (4) the Sheav-
wits, divisions. The last three are much alike in all their features and
dimensions. The Kaibab division is a little deeper, notably wider,
and very much grander and more diversified than the others. The to-
tal length of the Grand Canon, as the river runs, is about 218 miles, and
its depth varies from 4,500 to 0,000 feet, averaging 5,000. Its width,
from crestline to crestline, varies from 4i to 12 miles — the widest por-
tions being always the grandest.

It is also necessary to advert to the tributaries of the Colorado lying
within the district. Upon the northern side there is but one now enter-
ing the Grand Canon ; but there are on this side two others, one of which,
named the Paria, enters at the head of the Marble Canon, and the other,
the Virgen, which enters it about 40 miles west of the lower end of the

."/. JT. GkOLOaiCAl. SURVEY.

GrwdWai

<LX

Grand WashE

.{■; ii

.1 \ 1. i I .> 1 I. \ I I II

A// 'llvwhdl

...llllllll'IIIIHIII,....

imiliiUi]ini»iniiuu»unii<unin"" ii '» ,i,i,, "« , «-

fhrricanel

8 n i: a \ w i i's P L -i r /: .i u.

-t^-tt.

Kferi KdbabFkdl I tf<7

f /:,... '\-v ...,.-■ Trr- :— rt- u. ■ „ !■ . . --■.-.

/ .s k iliA'T c /. .; / /•; .i r.

Kanobl ... n

/c-i .v.i b p /^-t ra -i r

•

.

' '{a:bjbMni.

**.*••-

Devonian Silurian er.J .-'rchcccn unconformable *

P L .i '/•/; .1 c .

ftret hcrrcl

Echo Cliffs.

T_J LLi.^ I - , *T~-T~5a A^

~h , ■vi-v,-\t-^ , .; ;<■■ v. :.< \. 7rrrr--:7~r-'->> v > " \- w,\ , ■ ,t -~ ■

Volcanic

Cretaceous

Jura

- < ,-<•■■ -

TTTnr

I -|W V,

Trias

Permian

Carboniforous

3/ .1 R 7 J f , /•; CAN ON 1' LAT F O H M .

-_ -—-•-'- ■'■'■— r- Horizontal and 1'crhcal Scale

r. i_i_'_i i

I .

SECTION' FROM EAST TO WEST ACROSS THE ('.RAND CAXOX DISTRICT.

dutton.j DIVISIONS OF THE GRAND CANON. 73

Grand CaSon, Kanab Creek joins the Colorado on the north side in
the heart ot the great ehasm. These three streams, the Virgen on the
west, Kanab Creek in the middle, and the Paria on the east, all have
their sources in the terraces of the High Plateaus. They are very impor-
tant factors in the problem of reconstructing the history of the region.
On the south side of the river are (1) the Colorado Chiquito or Little
Colorado, entering at the foot of Marble Canon, (2) Cataract Creek, en-
tering near the middle of the Kanab division, (3) Diamond Creek, join-
ing at the elbow of the great bend in the Sheavwits division. These,
too, have their bearing upon the general problem.

CHAPTER III.

THE TERRACES.

In describing those subdivisions of the Grand Canon district which
are of greatest moment to the present discussion, I shall begin with the
terraces terminating the High Plateaus.

Before the observer who stands upon a southern salient of the Mai
kagunt Plateau is spread out a magnificent spectacle. The altitude is
nearly 11000 feet above the sea, and the radius of vision reaches to the
southward nearly a hundred miles. In the extreme distance is the calm
of the desert platform, its surface mottled with indistinct lights and
shades, too remote to disclose their meaning. Against the southeastern
horizon is projected the pale-blue escarpment of the Kaibab, which
stretches away to the south until the curvature of the earth carries it
out of sight. To the southward rise in merest outline, and devoid of
all visible details, the dark mass of Mount Trumbull and the waving
cones of the Uinkaret. Between these and the Kaibab the limit of the
prospect is a horizontal line, like that which separates the sea from the
sky. To the southwestward are the Sierras of the Basin Province, and
quite near to us there rises a short but quite lofty range of veritable
mountains, contrasting powerfully with the flat crestlines and mesas
which lie to the south and east. It is the Pine Valley range, and
though its absolute altitude above the sea is smaller than many other
ranges of the West, yet since their bases are comparatively low (3,000
to 3,500 feet above the sea), the mountain masses themselves are very
high.

THE EOCENE.

The foreground of the picture is full of strength and animation. At
our feet is the brink of a precipice where the profiles descend 800 feet
upon rugged slopes which shelve away downwards and mingle with
the inequalities of a broad platform deeply indented with picturesque
valleys. The cliff on which we stand is of marvelous sculpture and color.
The rains have carved out of it rows of square obelisks and pilasters of
uniform pattern and dimensions, which decorate the front for many miles,
giving the effect of a giantic colonnade from which the entablature
has been removed or has fallen in ruins. The Plateau Country abounds
in these close resemblances of natural carving to human architecture,
and nowhere are these more conspicuous or more perfect than in the

74

V. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

ASSUAL REPORT 1SHL PL. XV.

['INK CLIFFS— EOCENK— l'AUNSAGUNT.

duttomJ THE CRETACEOUS OF THE TERRACES. 75

scarps which terminate the summits of the Markagunt and Paunsagunt
Plateaus. Their color varies with the light and atmosphere. It is a
pale red under ordinary lights, but as the sun sinks towards the horizon
it deepens into a rich rose color, which is seen in no other rocks and is
beautiful beyond description. These cliffs are of lower Eocene age, con-
sisting of lake marls very uniformly bedded. At the base of this series
the beds are coarser, and contain well-marked, brackish-water fossils;
but as we ascend to the higher beds we find the great mass of the Eocene
to consist of fresh-water deposits.

These beds are identical in age with the lower divisions of the Eocene
which are seen in great volume both north and south of the Uinta
Mountains, in the basins of the Green River, of Bitter Creek, and of the
White and Uinta Rivers. Their geological relations and associations, too,
are quite the same, for the same lake bottom received the deposits of the
southern Uinta slopes and those of the Markagunt. Those of the Green
River basin north of the Uintas appear to have accumulated in a sepa-
rate lake basin communicating with the one which submerged the south
ern Plateau province. The interval separating the Markagunt from
the Uinta region is 250 miles and more, but the lower Eocene is contin-
uous between them. It occupies a marginal belt sometimes narrow,
but more frequently wide, which was once the locus of the northwestern
portion and shore line of the great lake. The summits of the High Pla-
teaus, wherever the volcanic masses are absent, disclose this formation,
and its presence is decisively inferred beneath the lavas and their debris.
A common bond between the two regions is also indicated by the
physical conditions attending the deposition of these strata. The lower
Eocene rests upon the underlying formations, conformably in some places,
iinconformably in others. Where conformity prevails, both the upper
and lower series were at the time of deposition sensibly horizontal.
Rutin many places the Cretaceous, prior to the deposition of the Eocene,
was greatly disturbed and greatly eroded. And in general the base of
the Eocene marks an epoch in the geological history of the country, in
which an old order of events was closing and a new order was making
its advent. This revolution was the transition of the region from the
oceanic condition to that of an estuary and lake, and subsequently to that
of dry land. The Lower Eocene beds are brackish-water deposits in
the basal members, while higher up they become fresh water. The
basal memhers are coarse and even conglomeratic in their texture, while
the middle and higher ones are fine and marly. Thus is indicated the
complete severence of the lake from the access of oceanic waters. Both
in the Uinta district and throughout the High Plateaus these events
are recorded in the same order and their meaning is the same in both.

The beds now found in the southern extremities of the High Pla-
teaus represent less than half of the duration of Eocene time. No
middle and no upper Eocene strata are found there. But as we go
northward towards the Uintas we find later and later formations sue-

76 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

cessively appearing until upon the flanks of the Uintas we find the
whole Eocene series in enormous volume, exceeding perhaps 5,000 feet.
Could these middle and Upper Eocene masses once have existed upon
the southern portion of the High Plateaus and been swept away by
erosion? There is strong evidence to the contrary.* The facts, then,
indicate that when the desiccation of thelake took place, the portion which
first emerged was the southern and southwestern — or the Grand Canon
district; that its shore line gradually receded northward during middle
and upper Eocene time, leaving dry land behind it ; and the last remnant
of the lake disappeared near the base of the Uintas. Wherever the physi-
cal geology and evolution of the Grand Canon district touches the ques-
tion of time, the earlier date of its emergence than that of other portions
of the Plateau Province appears — sometimes dimly, sometimes forcibly.
The principal mass of the Eocene terminates at the " Pink Clill's," as
they are called, in the southern margins of the Markagunt and Paunsa-
gunt Plateaus. There are a few outliers beyond. Around the base of
the Pine Valley Mountains to the southwest, and beyond them in the
same direction, some remnants have escaped destruction. But this part
of the country has not been sufficiently explored to indicate more than
the bare fact of their existence. Far to the eastward a single outlier
stands upon the summit of the great Kaiparo wits Plateau, forming the
apex of Kaiparowits Peak. But generally speaking, the Eocene is
wholly absent, so far as known, from the country south of the terraces.

THE CRETACEOUS.

The platform immediately below the Pink Cliffs is picturesque rather
than grand. Rough rolling ridges of yellow sandstone, long sloping
hillsides, and rocky promontories clad with large pines and spruces, sur-
round the valleys. These rocks are of Cretaceous age. Upon the south-
ward slopes of the Paunsagunt and Markagunt Plateaus, they nowhere
present the serried fronts of cliffs, but break down into long irregular
slopes much like those of common hill countries. In those superficial
and merely scenic aspects which make the terraces so impressive, the
Cretaceous is for the most part notably deficient ; but in those deeper
studies, which are of most significance to the geologist, it holds an im-
portance not inferior to that of any other formation. It is never wanting
at its proper place in the terraces, but always displays a vast series of
sandstones and clay-shales, varying from 4,000 to 5,000 feet in thickness.
Around the western and southern Hanks of the Markagunt, and just
beneath the summit platform, they occupy a belt varying in width from
4 to 10 miles. Around the Paunsagunt their relative positions and re-

*This evidence will be fully discussed in my monograph on the Geology of the Grand
Canon district. — C. E. D.

IM-TTON.

THE JURASSIC — THE COLOB. 77

lations arc quite the same. But as we pass eastward into the, great
amphitheater of the Paria Valley they at length take the form of cliffs
of very striking aspect The numerous ledges rise in quick succession,
step by step from the valley bottom to the base of the Eocene mass of
Table Cliff, which stands as a glorious Parthenon upon the summit of a
vast Acropolis. The many superposed cliffs which constitute this stair-
way are severally of moderate dimensions, but their cumulative altitude
is more than 4,000 feet, tier above tier, and their composite or multiple
effect, intensified by the exceeding sharpness of the infinite details of
repetitive sculpture, places it among the grander spectacles of the
Plateau country. In their coloring, these cliff's are quite peculiar. There
arc no red, purple, orange, and chocolate hues, such as prevail in other
formations, but pale yellow and light brown in the sandstones and blue-
gray to dark iron-gray in the heavy belts of shale. The tones are very
light and brilliant on the whole, the darker belts playing the part of a
foil which augments rather than diminishes their luminosity.

THE JURASSIC.

Beyond the Cretaceous, as we descend the stairway of terraces, the
Jurassic comes to daylight. It forms a belt encircling the Cretaceous
and outside of the latter. It is composed of two groups of strata ; the
upper consisting of red sandy shales with belts of impure limestone;
the lower a great mass of white sandstone, nearly a thousand feet thick.
The red shales contain abundant fossils, strongly characteristic of their
Jurassic age, while the sandstone below is wholly barren of organic re-
mains. The sandstone, however, is full of interest on account of its
remarkable lithological characters. From summit to base, it is appa-
rently one indivisible stratum. Here and there signs of a division are
suspected, but closer scrutiny shows that they are produced by the con-
tact of one plexus of cross-bedding with another, or by some other cause
not affecting the dominant fact. It is remarkably homogeneous through-
out its whole mass. On a near view of the rock faces thev are seen to
be covered with a wonderful filagree of cross-bedding. On every cliff
and headland, on every butte or rocky knoll where this huge stratum is
exposed, the rock faces are etched with an arabesque as beautiful as
frostwork. Along hundreds of miles of linear extent, and over thou-
sands of square miles of surface of the country, this graceful waving of
myriads of curves is displayed. Cross-bedding is common enough in
other regions and other formations, but nowhere in the world, I fancy,
can such a profusion of it be seen.

The Jurassic sandstone is also conspicuous for its cliffs. Here every
formation has its own style of architecture and sculpture, which are as
distinctive as the lithological constitution, for upon that constitution

78 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

the stylo depends. The Jurassic forma arc characterized by a peculiar
massiveness and boldness and by an extreme simplicity which is even
severe. Its walls aie quite plain, without horizontal or vertical mould-
ings, and the only decoration is the cross-bedding which becomes invis-
ible at distances sufficient to render a general view of the fronts effect-
ive. A notable feature also is the absence of talus — or, if it be present,
its small proportions. This simplicity usually gives a dull slumberous
aspect to the escarpments, suggesting on a vast scale the structures of
the Peruvian Incas. But it is not always so. Occasionally the auster-
ity of these forms is relaxed or replaced by a strange kind of animation
which sometimes becomes amusing. Looking southward from the brink
of the Markagunt the eye is attracted to the features of a broad middle
terrace upon its southwestern flank, named The Colob. 1 1 is a veritable
wonderland. It lies beyond the Cretaceous belt and is far enough away
to be obscure in its details, yet exciting curiosity. If we descend to it
we shall perceive numberless rock-forms of nameless shapes, but often
grotesque and ludicrous, starting up from the earth as isolated freaks of
carving or standing in clusters and rows along the white walls of sand-
stone. They bear little likeness to anything we can think of, and yet
they tease the imagination to find something wherennto they may be
likened. Yet the forms are in a certain sense very deiinite, and many of
them look merry and farcical. The land here is full of comedy. It is a
singular display of Nature's art mingled with nonsense. It is well
named the Colob, for the word has no ascertainable meaning and yet
sounds as if it ought to have one.

Nor are these the only forms which the Jurassic discloses. Here and
there blank faces of the white wall are brought into view as the sinuous
line of its front advances and recedes. Isolated masses cut oil' from the
main formation, and often at considerable distances from it, lie with a
majestic repose upon the broad expanse of the terrace. These some-
times become very striking in their forms. They remind us of great
forts with bastions and scarps nearly a thousand feet high. The smaller
masses become regular truncated cones with bare slopes. Some of them
take the form of great domes where the eagles may build their nests in
perfect safety. But noblest of all are the white summits of the great
temples of the Virgen gleaming through the haze. Here Nature has
changed her mood from levity to religious solemnity, and revealed her
fervor in forms and structures more beautiful than anything in human
art. But we shall see more of this hereafter and from much more advan-
tageous stand-points than the summit of the Markagunt. There only
faint suggestions of the reality are given. We only perceive in imper-
fect detail some throngs of towers, snow-white above and red below, the
bristling spires of ornate buttes, or a portion of the grand sweep of a
wing-wall thrust out from some unseen facade. None of them appear
in their full relations to the whole, and all of them are weakened, faded,
and tlatteued by the distance.

U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

,1 .Y.\7 ',1 /. RBPOR T 188 1. PL. X\ 7.

A MIDSUMMERDAVS DREAM.— JURASSIC— ON THE COLOB.

hl-1 U>\

BASIN OF THE VIRGEN. 79

At the border of the Jurassic the profile drops upon the summit of the
Trias, but from the summit of the Markagunt nothing is visible in detail
of that formation. The faces of the escarpments are turned away from
us and only the crestlines are visible. The view from the Markagunt,
however, is memorable because it is characteristic. To study the Trias
we must leave the verge of that Plateau and descend the terraces to the
southward.

On our way we may note several things of some importance. We
may observe, first, that the strata all have a very slight dip to the north.
This dip on the average is less than two degrees, but here and there
inclinations as great as four or five degrees may be seen. This dip is
very general throughout the terraces. Its effect is to make the altitudes
of the higher or more northerly platforms less— or, conversely, to make
the altitudes of the lower and more southerly terraces greater — than they
would be if the entire series were horizontal. In the entire series of beds
which are exposed, the aggregate thickness from the top of the Carbon-
iferous to the summit of the local Eocene is not far from 10.000 feet, but
the summit of the Eocene at present lies only about 5,000 to 0,000 feet
above the Carboniferous platform of the Grand Canon District. Thus, if
the strata were horizontal, we should in ascending the terraces go up
10,000 feet, but the dip to the northward gradually carries down the
horizons so that in crossing the edges of 10,000 feet of strata we only
gain 5,000 to 0,000 feet in altitude. We find this same northward dip
prevailing in the Carboniferous to the southward, and it is a feature of
great moment in the studies which are to follow.

Another point to benoted is that the strata slowly diminish in thick-
ness from west to east. The attenuation, however, is ordinarily very
slow and gradual, and the observer would have to travel manj miles
along the escarpments exposing the edges of the strata before he be-
came aware of it. It is most noticeable in the Trias, and in the sequel
this will be more fully discussed. The meaning of this attenuation of
the strata towards the east is as follows.

It is a common fact that the greatest thickness of a group of strata
is usually found near the shorelines of the mainlands from which their
materials came. As we recede from these ancient shorelines we gen-
erally find that the strata diminish in thickness, at first quite rapidly,
but afterwards more slowly. The materials deposited near the shores
are, in many cases, of coarser texture than those deposited at a distance
from them. This is not always true of every distinct bed, but if we con-
sider any group of strata with many members we shall usually find it
true of the group as a whole. In the case of the Mesozoic strata of the
terraces, they are remnants of beds deposited in a sea or bay, the shore-
line of which lay to the westward and northwestward. The position of
this shoreline, no doubt, varied during the Mesozoic periods, now ad-
vancing and now receding ; but in general terms its mean position ap-
pears to have been nearly along what is now the boundary of the Basin

80

GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

Province. The Great Basin was then dry land, undergoing denudation,
and its detritus was washed down on this side into the sea, where the
Mesozoic strata of the Plateau Province accumulated. The position of

this ancient shoreline in the Sierra country south of the Great Basin
and west of the Grand Gafion district we do not as yet know; the pre-
sumed location not being explored as yet. This attenuation of the
strata and their relation to the shoreline of the mainland, from which
they were in great part at least derived, is another important factor
which must be kept in mind in the course of the discussion.

It will be well to bestow also a glance at the distribution of the more
important drainage channels. The western portion of the terraces is

Fig 5.— Eutraucc to the Pani-nu-weap.

drained by the branches of the Virgen River. Upon the Colob heads
the northern fork of the Virgen, sometimes called the Mu-kuu-tu-weap,
sometimes Little Zion Kiver. It flows due south. East of this is the
eastern fork, called thePa-ru-nu-weap. Both branches have their sources
at the base of the Piuk Cliffs (Eocene), and at length unite to form the

T. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

ANNUAL REP0RT1881. PL. AT//.

THE PARUNUWEAP.
Prom PoweU'a Exploration of the Colorado River.

DUTTOX.l

BASIN OF THE VIRGEN. 81

Virgen. Their channels are surely very wonderful freaks of nature. The
Parunuweap, after collecting its several filaments on the slopes of the
Cretaceous terrace, at length begins to burrow into the Jurassic, cutting
a very deep and remarkably narrow gap in the white sandstone, and
then into and through the Trias. For many miles it Hows in a mere
cleft barely fifty feet wide at the bottom and sometimes narrower, and
attaining a depth of more than 2,500 feet. In scouring down its channel
into the sandstones the stream did not cut always vertically, but swayed
from side to side, so that now great bulges of the wall overhang the bot-
tom of the abyss, and in some places shut out the shy overhead. The
M ukuntuweap, or Little Zion fork, is even more remarkable. For a con-
riderable distance this stream also runs in a profound and exceptionally
narrow chasm, but it at length widens out, and just where it joins the
Parfiimweap is a scene which must ultimately become, when the knowl-
edge of it is spread, one of the most admired in the world. Of this
hereafter. Below the junction of the forks the Virgen flows westward,
and passes out of the terraces and out of the Plateau Province. At
length it joins the Colorado.

East of the drainage area of the Virgen is that of Kanab Creek.
It heads in the broad valley of Upper Kanab, which occupies an in-
dentation of the southern margin of the High Plateaus between the
Bfarkagunt and Paunsagunt. The bulk of the drainage passes through
the upper canon of Kanab Creek, and at length emerges upon the
desert to the southward. Further on it sinks another chasm in the Car-
boniferous, which becomes a mighty side gorge of the Colorado, and
unites with the Grand Canon in the middle of the Kanab division.

Still eastward is the great amphitheater which gives rise to the branches
of the Paria. This stream Hows southeastward and ultimately enters
the Colorado at the head of the Marble Canon.

In these three subordinate drainage basins of the terraces it is well to
notice some features of importance, common more or less to all, but
most distinctly seen in Kanab Creek. They all run contrary to the dip
of the strata. The summits of the terraces dip to the northward, while
the streams run southward. They thus form each a chain of canons.
Thus, Kanab Creek with its upper tributaries flowing in open valleys
soon begins to cut into the Jurassic, and its gorge, ever deepening, at
length becomes nearly a thousand feet in depth. Suddenly the cafion
walls swing to right and left to form the mural front which terminates
the Jurassic terrace, and the river, now at the summit of the Trias, is
once more in open country; but only for a short distance, for it soon be-
gins to cut into the Trias, forming a great canon as before. The same
process is repeated and the river flows out of its Triassic chasm into the
open again, while its walls swing in either direction to form the terminal
escarpment of the Triassic terrace.

The three streams just mentioned are not the only drainage channels
in the terraces, though they are the principal ones, and sooner or later

G A

82 GRAND CAftON DISTRICT.

gather the greater part of the drainage. There are many canons in the
terraces, and they all have the same relation to the cliffs and to the dips
of the strata. They cut into the terraces and emerge from them at the
bases of their several cliffs. All except the three first mentioned are
dry, carrying no streams except spasmodic floods during heavy rains and
the melting of the snows. Many of them are actually filling up, the
floods being unable to carry away all the sand and clay which the in-
frequent rains wash into them.

It is through the dry and partially refilled chasms that we may easily
descend from the High Plateaus to the Carboniferous platform of the
Grand Canon district. To study the Trias, we may best go to the little
village of Kanab and prepare for a journey along the base of the Ver-
milion Cliffs.

THE TRIAS.

Kanab village is situated under the eaves of the Vermilion Cliffs,
in the jaws of the canon of Kanab Creek. It has for several years been
the base of operations of the surveying parties working in the Grand
Canon district, and is well located for the purpose. After due prepara-
tion, we may leave the village, proceeding about twenty miles south-
westward to the southernmost promontory of the Triassic escarpment.
Here is Pipe Spring, famous in this far-off region as a watering place.
The reader would do well to find the locality on the map, for it is a nota-
ble point. The Vermilion Cliffs here change their trend to the north-
westward, and we shall presently follow them to admire their beauty
and magnitude; but before doing so it is well to take a brief view of
their geological relations.

The Trias is in most places separated from the Jura by a purely pro-
visional horizon which marks a change in the lithological aspect of the
strata, and in the grouping and habit of the series. Sometimes the pas-
sage from one to the other is obscured, but more frequently it is abrupt.
The Jurassic sandstone is without a likeness in any other formation,
and the sandstones of the Trias can ordinarily be distinguished from it
miles away. One of the most conspicuous distinctions is the color, and
it is a never- failing distinction. The Jurassic is white; the Trias is flam-
ing red. Equally conspicuous is the difference in bedding and in 1 lie
architecture. The Jura is a solid indivisible mass of 8U0 to 1,000 feet
in thickness; the Trias is composed of a very great number of beds,
most of which are only a few feet in thickness. One bed, however,
attains vast proportions. The majority of the layers are common sand-
stones, and they predominate most in the upper portion of the series.
In the middle part the sandstones still predominate but are individually
thinner, and are more often separated by shaly layers and by bands of
gypsum. In the lower portions, sandy and argillaceous shales of won-

U. S. HEOLOOICAI. SURVEY.

ANNUAL REPORT 1881. I'L. XVII I.

VERMILLION CLIFFS AT KANAB. TRIASSIC.

BUTTON.

THE VERMILION CLIFFS. 83

derful colors predominate. Lime isfoimcl in these rocks, and in notable
quantity, but it is almost always in the form of gypsum or selenite. No
fossils in these parts have yet been found which are of paleontologies!
value; but fish-scales, and fragments of bony scutes are sometimes ob-
tained, which are useless for the purposes of the geologist. In the lower
shales we find a great abundance of fossil trees completely silicified
and several bulky layers are composed very largely of their fragments.
The Trias makes its appearance upon the outermost western flank of
the Markagunt, a little north of the Mormon town Cedar, rising by a
fault out of the valley alluvium. With a constantly expanding exposure,
it extends southward along the west flank of the Markagunt and along
the upthrow of the Eurricane fault, until the whole of its mass comes to
the surface; then broadening out into a wide terrace, it sweeps around
the southwestern limit of the Colob and over into the valley of the Vir-
gen, where it breaks into cliifs, temples, towers, and buttes of ineffable
splendor and beauty. Thence, with a still wider terrace, bounded by a
giant wall, it stretches to the southeast as far as Pipe Spring. Here is
its southernmost promontory, from which its front trends away north-
east and east in proportions diminished somewhat, but still imposing,
as far as the Paria River. Thus far the distance is more than 120 miles,
in which the sinuosities of the front are not reckoned. Throughout this
entire sweep it presents to the southward a majestic wall richly sculp-
tured and blazing with gorgeous colors. The cliff line is very tortuous,
advancing in promontories, with intervening bays and broad canon val-
leys setting far back into the terrace, and resembling a long stretch of
coast-line gashed with fiords. Perhaps also the contour of a maple-leaf
may be a suggestive analogy. The altitudes of the cliffs are greatest in
t heir western portions, for there we find greater thickness of strata. They
often exceed 2,000 feet, while in the portion extending from Pipe Spring
to the Paria the altitude ranges from 1,000 to 1,400 feet.

THE VERMILION CLIFFS.

To this great wall, terminating the Triassic terrace and stretching
from the Hurricane Ledge to the Paria, Powell has given the name of
The Vermilion Cliffs. Their great altitude, the remarkable length of
their line of frontage, the persistence with which their proportions
are sustained throughout the entire interval, their ornate sculpture and
rich coloring, might justify very exalted language of description. But
to the southward, just where the desert surface dips downward beneath
the horizon, are those supreme walls of the Grand Canon, which we must
hereafter behold and vainly strive to describe; and however worthy of
admiration the Vermilion Cliffs may be we must be frugal of adjectives,
lest in the chapters to be written we And their force and meaning ex-

84 GRAM) ('ANON DISTRICT.

hausted. They will be weak anil vapid enough at best. Yet there are
portions of the Vermilion Cliffs which in some respeets lay hold of the
sensibilities with a force not much less overwhelming than the majesty
of the Grand Canon; not in the same way, not by virtue of the same
elements of power and impressiveness, but in a way of their own and by
attributes of their own. In mass and grandeur and in the extent of
the display there is no comparison; it would be like comparing a
private picture gallery containing a few priceless treasures with the
wealth of art in the Vatican or Louvre. All of the really superlative
portions of the Vermilion (Mill's could be comfortably displayed in any
one of half a dozen amphitheaters opening into the Kaibab division of
the Grand Canon. These portions occur in the beautiful valley of the
Virgen, and they, as well as the features which characterize the entire
front of the Vermilion Cliffs, merit some attempt at description.

Each of the greater sedimentary groups of the terraces from the
Eocene to the Permian inclusive, has its own style of sculpture and
architecture; aud it is at first surprising and always pleasing to observe
how strongly the several styles contrast with each other. The elephan-
tine structures of the Nile, the Grecian temples, the pagodas of China,
the cathedrals of Western Europe, do not offer stronger contrasts than
those we successively encounter as we descend the great stairway which
leads down from the Sigh Plateaus. As we pass from one terrace to
another the scene is wholly changed; not only in the bolder and grander
masses which dominate the landscape, but in every detail and acces-
sory; in the tone of the color-masses, in the vegetation, aud in the spirit
and subjective influences of the scenery. Of these many and strong
antitheses, there is none stronger than that between the repose of the
Jura and the animation of the Trias.

The profile of the Vermilion Cliffs is very complex, though conform-
ing to a definite type and made up of simple elements. Although it
varies much in different localities it never loses its typical character.
It consists of a series of vertical ledges rising tier above tier, story
above story, with intervening slopes covered with talus through which
the beds project their fretted edges. The stratification is always re-
vealed with perfect distinctness and is even emphasized by the peculiar
weathering. The beds are very numerous and mostly of small or mod-
erate thickness, and the partings of the sandstones include layers of
gypsum or gypsiferous sand and shale. The weathering attacks these
gypseous layers with great effect, dissolving them to a considerable
depth into the wall-face, producing a deeply engraved line between the
including sandstones. This line is always in deep shadow and throws
into strong relief the bright edges of the strata in the rock-face, sepa-
rating them from each other with uncommon distinctness. Where the
profiles are thrown well into view the vertical li.ies, which bound the
faces of the ledges, are quite perpendicular and straight, while the lines
of the intervening slopes are feebly concave, being, in fact, descending

DL'TTOX. I

THE VERMILION CLIFFS. 85

branches of hyperbolas. They are graceful in form and indeed genuine
lines of beauty. The angles where the straight and curved lines meet,
at the bases and summits of the ledges, are very keen and well cut.
The composite effect thus given by the multiple cliffs and sloping water-
tables rising story above story, by the acute definition of the profiles
and horizontal moldings, and by the refined though unobtrusive de-
tails, is highly architectural and ornate, and contrasts in the extreme
with the rough, craggy, beetling aspect of the cliffs of other regions.
This effect is much enhanced by the manner in which the wall ad-
vances in promontories or recedes in alcoves, and by the wings and
gables with sharp corners and Mansard roofs jutting out from every
lateral face where there is the least danger of blankness or monotony.
In many places caiions have cut the terrace platform deeply, and
open in magnificent gateways upon the broad desert plain in front. We
look into them from afar, wonderingly and questioningly, with a fancy
pleased to follow their windings until their sudden turns carry them
into distant, unseen depths.

Northwestward of the southernmost promontory at Pipe Spring, the
cliff's steadily increase in grandeur and animation, and also assume new
features. Near the summit of the series is a very heavy stratum of
sandstone, which is everywhere distinguishable from the others. This
member is seen at Kanab with a thickness of about 200 feet. It increases
westward, becoming 400 feet at Pipe Spring. Beyond that it still in-
creases, reaching a thickness of more than 1,200 feet in the valley of the
Virgen. It has many strong features, and yet they elude description.
One point, however, may be seized upon, and that is, a series of joints
nearly vertical with which the mass is everywhere riven. The fissures
thus produced have been slowly enlarged by weathering, and down the
face of every escarpment run the dark shadows of these rifts. They
reach often from top to bottom of the mass and penetrate deeply its
recesses. Wherever this great member forms the entablature — and west
of Pipe Spring it usually does so — its crest is uneven and presents
towers and buttresses produced by the widening of these cracks. Near
Short Creek it breaks into lofty truncated towers of great beauty
and grandeur, with strongly emphasized vertical lines and decora-
tions, suggestive of cathedral architecture on a colossal scale. Still
loftier and more ornate become the structures as we approach the
Virgen. At length they reach the sublime. The altitudes increase
until they approach 2,000 feet above the plain. The wall is recessed
with large amphitheaters, buttressed with huge spurs and decorated
with towers and pinnacles. Here, too, for the first time, along their
westward trend, the Vermilion Cliffs send off' buttes. And giant buttes
they verily are, rearing their unassailable summits into the domain of
the clouds, rich with the aspiring forms of Gothic type, and Hinging
back in red and purple the intense sunlight poured over them. Could
the imagination blanch those 1 ; colors, it might compare them with vast

U. S. GEOLOGICAL SUKVEY.

AWTAL HEPOHT 1881. PL. XIX.

■•4lte' v - - ■■**:■ . ■ • •-

5* ■

TOWERS A.T SHORT CREEK. VERMILION CUFFS,

86 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

icebergs, rent from the front of a glacier and floating majestically out
to sea; only here it is the parent mass that recedes, melting away
through the ages, while its offspring stands still. Yet the analogy
would be a feeble one, for the buttes are grander, more definite in
form, and many times loftier. But the climax of this scenery is stilt
beyond.

Late in the autumn of 1880 I rode along the base of the Vermilion
Cliffs, from Kanab to the Virgen, having the esteemed companionship of
Mr. Holmes. We had spent the summer and most of the autumn
among the cones of the Uinkaret, in the dreamy parks and forests of
the Kaibab, and in the solitudes of the intervening desert; and OUT sen-
sibilities had been somewhat overtasked by the scenery of the Grand
Canon. It seemed to us that all grandeur and beauty thereafter beheld
must be mentally projected against the recollection of those scenes, and
be dwarfed into commonplace by the comparison ; but as we moved
onward the walls increased in altitude, in animation, and in power. At
length the towers of Short Creek burst into view, and, beyond, the great
cliff in long perspective thrusting out into the desert plain its gables
and spurs. The day was a rare one for this region. The mild, sub-
tropical autumn was over, and just giving place to the first approaches
of winter. A sullen storm had been gathering from the southwest, and
the first rain for many months was falling, mingled with snow. Heavy
clouds rolled up against the battlements, spreading their fleeces over
turret and crest, and sending down curling flecks of white mist into the
nooks and recesses between towers and buttresses. The next day was
rarer still, with sunshine and storm battling for the mastery. Boiling
masses of cumuli rose up into the blue to incomprehensible heights, their
Hanks and summits gleaming with sunlight, their nether surfaces above
the desert as flat as a ceiling, and showing, not the dull neutral gray of
the east, but a rosy tinge caught from the reflected red of rocks and soil.
As they drifted rapidly against the great barrier, the currents from
below, flung upward to the summits, rolled the vaporous masses into
vast whorls, wrapping them around the towers and crest-lines, and
scattering torn shreds of mist along the rock-faces. As the day wore
on the sunshine gained the advantage. From overhead the cloud
masses stubbornly withdrew, leaving a few broken ranks to maintain a
feeble resistance. But far in the northwest, over the Colob, they rallied
their black forces for a more desperate struggle, and answered with
defiant flashes of lightning the incessant pour of sun-shafts.

Superlative cloud effects, common enough in other countries, are
lamentably infrequent here; but, when they do come, their value is
beyond measure. During the long, hot summer days, when the sun is
high, the phenomenal features of the scenery are robbed of most of their
grandeur, and cannot or do not wholly reveal to the observer the reali-
ties which render them so instructive and interesting. There are few
middle tones of light and shade. The effects of foreshortening are

duttoh.1 THE VERMILION CUFFS. 87

excessive, almost beyond belief, and produce the strangest deceptions.

Masses which are widely separated seem to be superposed or continuous.
Lines and surfaces, which extend towards us at an acute angle with the
radius of vision, are warped around until they seem to cross it at a right
angle. Grand fronts, which ought to show depth and varying distance,
become flat and are troubled with false perspective. Proportions which
are full of grace and meaning are distorted and belied. During the mid-
day hours the cliffs seem to wilt and droop as if retracting their grandeur
to hide it from the merciless radiance of the sun whose very effulgence
flouts them. Even the colors are ruined. The glaring face of the wall,
where the light falls full upon it, wears a scorched, overbaked, dis-
charged look; and where the dense black shadows are thrown — for there
are no middle shades — the magical haze of the desert shines forth with
a weird, metallic glow which has no color in it. But as the sun declines
there comes a revival. The half-tones at length appear, bringing into
relief the component masses; the amphitheaters recede into suggestive
distances; the salients silently advance towards us; the distorted lines
range themselves into true perspective; the deformed curves come back-
to their proper sweep; the angles grow clean and sharp; and the whole
cliff arouses from lethargy and erects itself in grandeur and power,
as If conscious of its own majesty. Back also come the colors, and as
the sun is about to sink they glow with an intense orange-vermilion
that seems to be an intrinsic luster emanating from the rocks themselves.
But the great gala-days of the cliffs are those when sunshine and storm
are waging an even battle; when the massive banks of clouds send their
white diffuse light into the dark places and tone down the intense glare
of the direct rays; when they roll over the summits in stately procession,
wrapping them in vapor and revealing cloud-girt masses here and there
through wide rifts. Then the truth appears and all deceptions are ex-
posed. Their real grandeur, their true forms, and a just sense of their
relations are at last fairly presented, SO that the mind can grasp them.
And they are very grand — even sublime. There is no need, as we look
upon them, of fancy to heighten the picture, nor of metaphor to present
it. The simple truth is quite enough. I never before had a realizing
sense of a cliff 1,800 to 2,000 feet high. T think I have a definite and
abiding one at present.

As we moved northward from Short Creek, we had frequent oppor-
tunities to admire these cliffs and bultes, with the conviction that they
were revealed to us in their real magnitudes and in their true relations.
They awakened an enthusiasm more vivid than we had anticipated, and
one which the recollection of far grander scenes did not dispel. At
length the trail descended into a shallow basin where a low ledge of
sandstones, immediately upon the right, shut them out from view; but
as we mounted the opposite rim a new scene, grander and more beau
tiful than before, suddenly broke upon us. The cliff again appeared,
presenting the heavy sandstone member in a sheer wall nearly a thou-

88 GRAND CANON' DISTRICT.

sand feet high, with a steep tolas beneath it of eleven or twelve hundred
feel more. Wide alcoves receded far back into the mass, and in their
depths the clouds floated. Long, sharp Spurs plunged swiftly down,
thrusting their monstrous buttresses into the plain below, and sending
up pinnacles and towers along the knife edges. But the controlling
object was a great butte which sprang into view immediately before us ?
and which the salient of the wall had hitherto masked. Upon a ped-
estal two miles long and a thousand feet high, richly decorated with
horizontal moldings, rose four towers highly suggestive of cathedral
architecture. Their altitude above the plain was estimated at about
1,800 feet. They were separated by vertical clefts made by the enlarge-
ment Of the joints, and many smaller clefts extending from the summits
to the pedestal carved the turrets into tapering buttresses, which gave
a graceful aspiring effect with a remarkable definiteness to the forms.
We named it Smithsonian Butte, and it was decided that a sketch
should be made of it; but in a few moments the plan was abandoned or
forgotten. For over a notch or saddle formed by a low isthmus which
connected the butte with the principal mesa there sailed slowly and
majestically into view, as we rode along, a wonderful object. Deeply
moved, we paused a moment to contemplate it, and then abandoning the
trail we rode rapidly towards the notch, beyond which it soon sank out
of sight. In an hour's time we reached the crest of the isthmus, and in
an instant there flashed before us a scene never to be forgotten. In
coming time it will, I believe, take rank with a very small number of
spectacles each of which will, in its own way, be regarded as the most
exquisite of its kind which the world discloses. The scene before us
was

THE TEMPLES AND TOWERS OF THE VIROEN.

At our feet the surface drops down by cliff and talus 1,200 feet upon<v
broad and rugged plain cut by narrow caiions. The slopes, the winding
ledges, the bosses of projecting rock, the naked, scanty soil, display colors
which are truly amazing. Chocolate, maroon, purple, lavender, magenta,
with broad bands of toned white, are laid in horizontal belts, strongly
contrasting with each other, and the ever-varying slope of the surface
cuts across them capriciously, so that tin 1 , sharply defined belts wind
about like the contours of a map. From right to left across the fur-
ther foreground of the picture stretches the inner caiion of the Virgen,
about 700 feet in depth, and here of considerable width. Its bottom is
for the most part unseen, but in one place is disclosed by a turn in its
course, showing the vivid green of vegetation. Across the caiion, and
rather more than a mile and a half beyond it, stands the central and com-
manding object of the picture, the western temple, rising 4,000 feet above
the river. Its glorious summit was the object we had seen an hour

Dunox ] TEMPLES AND TOWERS OF THE VIHOEX. 89

before, and now the matchless beauty and majesty of its vast mass was
all before us. Yet it was only the central object of a mighty throng of
structures wrought up to the same exalted style, and tilling up the entire
panorama. Right opposite us are the two principal forks of the Virgen,
the Pariinuweap coming from the right or east, and the Mukuntuweap
or Little Zion Valley, descending towards us from the north. The Pariin-
uweap is seen emerging on the extreme right through a stupendous gate-
way and chasm in the Triassic terrace, nearly H,000 feet in depth. The
further wall of this canon, at the opeuing of the gateway, quickly swings
northward at a right angle and becomes the eastern wall of Little Zion
Valley. As it sweeps down the Parunuweap it breaks into great pedi-
ments, covered all over with the richest carving. The effect is much like
that which the architect of the Milan Cathedral appears to have de-
signed, though here it is vividly suggested rather than fully realized—
as an artist painting in the "broad style" suggests many things without
actually drawing them. The sumptuous, bewildering, mazy effect is all
there, but when we attempt to analyze it in detail it eludes us. The
flank of the wall receding up the Mukuntuweap is for a mile or two simi-
larly decorated, but soon breaks into new forms much more impressive
and wonderful. A row of towers half a mile high is quarried out of the
palisade, and stands well advanced from its face. There is an eloquence
in their forms which stirs the imagination with a singular power, and
kindles in the mind of the dullest observer a glowing response. Just
behind them, and rising a thousand feet higher, is the eastern temple,
crowned with a cylindric dome of white sandstone ; but since it is, in
many respects, a repetition of the nearer western temple, we may turn
our attention to the latter. Directly in front of us a complex group of
white towers, springing from a central pile, mounts upwards to the
clouds. Out of their midst, and high over all, rises a dome-like mass,
which dominates the entire landscape. It is almost pure white, with brill-
iant streaks of carmine descending its vertical walls. At the summit it
[8 truncated, and a flat tablet is laid upon the top, showing its edge of
deep red. It is impossible to liken this object to any familiar shape, for
it resembles none. Yet its shape is far from being indefinite; on the
contrary, it has a definiteness and individuality which extort an excla-
mation of surprise when first beheld. There is no name provided for
such an object, nor is it worth while to invent one. Call it a dome ; not
because it has the ordinary shape of such a structure, but because it per-
forms the function of a dome.

The towers which surround it are of inferior mass and altitude, but
each of them is a study of fine form and architectural effect. They arc;
white above, and change to a strong, rich red below. Dome and towers
are planted upon a substructure no less admirable. Its plan is in-
definite, but its profiles are perfectly systematic. A curtain wall 1,400
feet high descends vertically from the eaves of the temple and is suc-
ceeded by a steep slope of ever-widening base courses leading down to

90

GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

FlG. C. — The Mu-krtu-tu-weap.

the esplanade below. The curtain-wall is decorated with a lavish dis-
play of vertical moldings, and the ridges, eaves and initered angles are
fretted with serrated cusps. This ornamentation is suggestive rather
than precise, but it is none the less effective. It is repetitive, not sym-
metrical. But though exact symmetry is wanting, nature has here
brought home to us the truth that symmetry is only one of an infinite
range of devices by which beauty can be materialized.

And finer forms are in the quarry
Than ever Angelo evoked.

Reverting to the twin temple across Little Zion Valley, its upper mass

U. 6. GKGLGOIl'AL SURYI.r.

,i.\.\; M. HEIGHT 1881. PL. XX.

/r "iLr$7t

t

. -
■ - ...

* M

.

•

■

- .

.. - '

- - - - - -

■•

!
.1

■. . "

• ' - -•

»

1 .-

-■.

- -

THE TEMPLES AND TOWERS oF THE VIRGEN.

dutton] THE PERMIAN. 91

is a repetition of the one wliieli crowns the western pile. It has the
same elliptical contour, and a similar red tablet above. In its effect
upon the imagination it is much the same. But from the point from which
we first viewed them — and it is by far the best one accessible — it was too
distant to be seen to the fullest advantage, and the western temple by
its greater proximity overpowered its neighbor.

Nothing can exceed the wondrous beauty of Little Zion Valley which
separates the two temples and their respective groups of towers. Nor
are these the only sublime structures which look down into its depths,
for similar ones are seen on either hand along its receding vista until a
turn in the course carries the valley out of sight. In its proportions it
is about equal to Yo Semite, but in the nobility and beauty of the sculpt-
ures there is no comparison. It is Hyperion to a satyr. >.*o wonder the
fierce Mormon zealot, who named it, was reminded of the Great Zion,
on which his fervid thoughts were bent. — "of houses not built with
hands, eternal in the heavens."

From these highly wrought groups in the center of the picture the eye
escapes to the westward along a mass of cliffs and buttes covered with
the same profuse decoration as the walls of the temples and of the Para-
nuweap. Their color is brilliant red. Much animation is imparted to this
part of the scene by the wandering courses of the mural fronts which
have little continuity and no definite trend. The Triassic terrace out of
which they have been carved is cut into by broad amphitheatres and
slashed in all directions by wide canon valleys. The resulting escarp-
ments stretch their courses in every direction, here fronting towards us,
there averted ; now receding behind a nearer mass and again emerging
from an unseen alcove. Far to the westward, twenty miles away, is seen
the last palisade lifting its imposing front behind a mass of towers and
domes to an altitude of probably near 3,000 feet and with a grandeur
which the distance cannot dispel. Beyond it the scenery changes almost
instantly, for it passes at once into the Great Basin, which, to this re-
gion, is as another world.

THE PERMIAN.

The idea of a terrace is not so typically represented in the Permian as
it is in the superior formations. In many parts of the great stairway it
clearly forms the lowest step ; in others it forms one cliff with the Trias ;
in still others it is beveled oft* and covered with alluvium. On the whole
it is more frequently presented as a distinct terrace. There is another
qualification which requires some mention, because when we refer to the
geological map to study the surface distribution of the strata, we should
find some anomalies unless the point referred to were duly explained.

Wherever we encounter a cliff which discloses the upper Permian
beds we find at the summit of the escarpment a band of pale-brown

92 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

sandstone of very coarse texture, often becoming a conglomerate. Ita
thickness is usually from 40 to 75 feet. In a few places it is wanting
from its proper horizon, and in some others its thickness becomes more
than 100 feet. But on the whole it is a remarkably persistent bed, and
its persistence is all the more striking when we consider the coarseness
of its texture; for no beds are so variable as the coarse ones. This
member has been named by Powell the Shin-a-rump Conglomerate. The
name Shinarump he also applies provisionally to a large group of beds
in which the conglomerate is included.* For several years it was
thought very probable that these beds were a part of the Triassic
system, though no positive proof could be cited to sustain that pre-
sumption. In the summer of 1879 Mr. 0. D. Walcott, of this survey, at
length found some limestone bands near the base of Powell's Shinarump,
which seem to establish pretty conclusively their Permian age. Bnt
the fossils so far discovered have only a small vertical range, and lie
near the base of the group. Above them are many hundred feet of
beds which yield no fossils at all. While some of them are unquestion-
ably Permian, it still remains to find the horizon where the Permian
ends and the Trias begins. The Trias is as destitute of fossils as the
Permian, excepting, however, some which are useless for determining
age. In cases like this the geologist finds himself in trouble. Ho is
quite sure that he has beds of two distinct ages; and he must, for pur-
poses of discussion, separate them somehow; if not by a natural and
unmistakable dividing horizon, then by an arbitrary and provisional
one, subject to amendment by future research. But he must look very
carefully for a natural horizon of separation. His course of procedure
would be somewhat as follows. Starting, for instance, with those strata
which he was sure were Triassic, he would examine the beds downwards
and finding no fossils would pay attention to their lithological characters.
Finding no marked difference in the beds, and finding a strict parallelism
or "conformity" in the several members, he would infer that: they were
deposited under conditions which were substantially identical throughout
the period of deposition. But if he at length reached a stratum of very
different character, say, for instance, after passing down through a
great series of sandstones and shales, he came to a heavy mass of lime-
stone or a bulky conglomerate, he would have found at last a " break"
in the continuity or homogeneity of the group. Here, at last, is some-
thing which he can use. It may or it may not be synchronous with
the dividing horizon used in Russia, England, or Kansas, but it is at
all events not far from it; and it is something palpable, distinct, and
recognizable by those who come after him. In this way Mr. Walcott

*For tbo information of the general reader it maybe explained that when the
geologist entering a new region discovers a well-defined group of beds which either
yield no fossils at all or yield such as do not enable him to determine conclusively the
age of the series, he does not assign the beds to any definite age or system, but gives
them a purely provisional and local name which is dropped as soon as the true age is
established.

t . S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

ASSCAI. KEFOUT IHHl. PL. XXI.

PERMIAN BUTTE NEAR KANAB.

button.] THE PERMIAN. ^3

seized upon the Shinarump conglomerate as a divisional stratum between
the Trias and Permian. But another perplexing- question arose. To
which of the two series should the conglomerate itself be assigned ?
And the question is not at first an easy one to answer. Immediately
above it is a series of sandy shales such as beggar description on account
of their gorgeous colors. Immediately below it is another series of
sandy shales so similar to the one above that we never know which of
the two we are looking at unless the conglomerate is in sight as a
"benchmark." Mr. Walcott settled the question (provisionally, of
course) in the following way. The summit of the lower series shows
in many places that immediately after it was deposited it was slightly
eroded, and the contact of the conglomerate shows an "unconformity
by erosion." The contact of the conglomerate with tin- upper series
shows no such unconformity. Xow, an unconformity means to the
geologist a break in the continuity of deposition, and in the absence of
reasons to the contrary, and with no better divisional criterion at hand,
it may be used to separate two series of beds, lie therefore assigned
the conglomerate to the Trias, and the beds below he placed in the
Permian.

Mr. Walcott's conclusion is no doubt the best which can be reached
with our present knowledge, but it is very inconvenient and awkward to
the geologist who is required to map the, distribution of the strata and
their topographical features. In all of the other formations each group
forms its own terrace or series of terraces. As we descend them we find
ourselves, when we reach the foot of the Eocene cliff, upon the summit
of the Cretaceous. Peaching the foot of the Cretaceous cliffs, or slopes.
we are upon the broad expanse of the Jurassic platform. Descending
the Jurassic, we find the Trias coming out from the base of the Jurassic
Cliffs; but when we descend the Vermilion Cliffs, we have not reached
the Permian. The Trias is still beneath us, poshing out its basal mem-
ber, the Shinarump conglomerate, clear to the cresMineof the Permian
wall. In the Jurassic terrace and in its terminal cliff we find none but
Jurassic strata. Similarly, also, on the cliffs and terrace platforms of the
Cretaceous and Eocene; but the Permian terrace is everywhere sheeted
over with a solitary stratum of the Trias. Somehow we cannot help
thinking that the conglomerate has no business there, and that it ought
to have been cut off at the base of the Vermilion Cliffs, or else it ought
to be relegated to the Permian. In delineating the distribution of
the formations by means of colors on the map, the ordinary practice
would require us to extend the Trias to the brink of the Permian Cliffs,
for in such delineations we only profess to show the surface exposures
of the several groups ; but this would confound the Permian terrace with
the Trias, and obliterate the individuality of the former, whereas in the
topography both are as distinct as land. and water. To preserve this
distinction the Shinarump is denoted by a special modification of the

U. S. GKOl.OdlCAI. SURVEY.

ANKUAL REPORT 1881. PL. XXII.

LAND OF THE STANDING ROCKS.

94 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

color, which is to be interpreted as meaning an arbitrary subdivision of
the Trias.

The Permian beds consist of sandy clay-shales in very many thin beds
and a few thin beds of impure limestone. They are very striking on
account of their dense, rich colors, which are sometimes also wonderfully
delicate. They are belted in a surprising way. Horizontal streaks of
chocolate, purple and red-brown are interstratified with violet, lavender,
and white. Perhaps the richest tone is the red-brown, which is almost
exactly like the color of the fumes of nitrous acid. Lower in the series
are layers of a very peculiar shade of Indian red, alternating with gray
ish white. In the lower Trias and Permian the colors reach their climax.
Surely no other region in the world, of which I have any knowledge, can
exhibit anything comparable to it. Wonderfully even is the bedding.
Thin layers may be traced for miles without showing any variation of
thickness, color, or texture. In the escarpments the weathering has
etched out the harder layers, leaving a line of shadow in the places of
the softer layers, and this greatly emphasizes the stratification and gives
it finer detail.

The Permian series is of considerable magnitude. In the western
portion of the district its thickness is greater than elsewhere, reaching,
probably, 1,400 feet, and possibly 1,000 feet, while in the vicinity of
Kanab it is less than 1,000 feet. It gives rise to terminal cliffs, which
in the northern part of the Uinkaret are from 800 to 1,000 feet high,
while around Kanab their height seldom exceeds 500 or GOO, and is often
less than 300. But what they lack in magnitude they make up in refine
ment and beauty of detail and in sumptuous color. It is in the Permian
that we find the most remarkable buttes. They arc never large, but their
resemblances to human architecture or works of design are often amaz-
ing. Very few Permian buttes are found in the Grand Canon district,
but further eastward, especially in the neighborhood of the junction of
the Grand and Green Rivers, they are innumerable and of such definite-
ness that the geologist feels as if he were taxing the credulity of his
hearers when he asks them to believe that they are the works of nature
alone, and not of some race of Titans.

At the foot of the Permian cliffs begins the Carboniferous platform of
the interior region of the Grand Canon district. It stretches southward
without visible bound, an almost featureless plain. It terminates be-
yond the San Francisco Mountains in the Aubrey Cliffs.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GREAT DENUDATION.

Before leaving the terraces we may with advantage pause to contem-
plate the great lesson in geology which they lay open to us. The sub-
ject of the lesson is Erosion. In a preliminary way we examined the
type of it in the San Rafael district, which was brielly treated of in the
first chapter. The same fact confronts us again in the Grand Canon
district. Here, however, the attendant facts are more complex, more
difficult to grasp, and less easy to summarize. And vast as the erosion
has been in the San Rafael it has been many times greater in the Grand
( 5aSon district. In this discussion three classes of facts will be utilized :
1st, the stratification; 2d, the faults and tlexures, or vertical displace-
ments; 3d, the drainage. Each class furnishes its quota of evidence.
Yet, so intimately are the several threads of argument interwoven, that
it is almost impossible to separate them and view each independently
of the others. Hence if the argument skips about from one to another
before the one is fully developed, it is because no other method of treat-
ment seems practicable.

The geologist seeing the series of Mesozoic and Eocene strata sud-
denly terminating in the terraces in the faces of the cliffs, would at
once say that these strata formerly extended farther southward. For
he is ever mindful of the fact that in the lapse of long periods the rocks
decay, and the rains and rills gather up the debris and carry it away.
He also has had impressed upon his mind the general fact that the most
rapid waste takes place on the edges of the strata exposed in vertical
wall-faces. Every year the rains wash away something from the mural
fronts. In a single year it may be a mere film, but in the lapse of thou-
sands of centuries the amount whittled off becomes a vast aggregate.
Like the motion of the fixed stars the change is not perceptible to a
generation; but a million years would change the aspect of a denuding
country as profoundly as they would change the aspect of the heavens.
How long in terms of years this "Recession of the Cliff's" has been going
on, the geologist does not know, though he presumes the period to have
been certainly hundreds of thousands of years and very probably some
millions. Feeling assured, then, that the terraces once projected further
south, the inquiry arises, how far? Let me answer at once. They ex-
tended southward over the entire Grand Canon district, into cen-
tral Arizona, where they ended along the shore of the ancient mainland

95

96 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

from which their materials wore in part derived. The distance of that
shore-line, from the summit of the Pink Cliffs, is from 130 to 180 miles,
and the width of the denuded district is from 120 to 140 miles. From
the base of the Vermilion Cliffs the distance is 25 to 30 miles less. The
area of maximum denudation is from 13,000 to 15,000 square miles, and
the average thickness of the strata removed from it was about 10,000
feet.

The general reader will no doubt feel a strong aversion to such pro-
digious figures on their first presentation, and even the geologist whose
credulity has been shocked so often that he has gotten used to it may
wince once more. It is not from a love of the marvelous or dramatic;
it is not without a full sense of the oppression of unaccustomed mag-
nitudes that these assertions are made. They are made because they
follow inexorably from the facts, and because they are necessary conclu-
sions from clear premises. But, in order that the reader may not bo
obliged to carry a heavy burden of prejudice as he follows the various
steps of the argument, it is well to anticipate some part of the discussion,
and thus relieve him of a great part of the load at the outset, for it can
be shown that the figures, while they are certainly very large, are in
no respect abnormal, and in only one respect are they at all unusual.

Erosion, viewed in oneway, is the supplement of the process by which
strata are accumulated. The materials which constitute the stratified
rocks were derived from the degradation of the land. This proposition
is fundamental in geology — nay, it is the broadest and moat comprehen-
sive proposition with which that science deals. It is to geology what
the law of gravitation is to astronomy. We can conceive no other origin
for the materials of the strata, and no other is needed, for this one is
sufficient and its verity a thousand times proven. Erosion and "sedi-
mentation" are the two half phases of one cycle of causation — the debit
and credit sides of one system of transactions. The quantity of mate-
rial which the agents of erosion deal with is in the long run exactly
the same as the quantity dealt with by the agencies of deposition; or,
rather, the materials thus spoken of are one and the same. If, then, we
would know how great have been the quantities of material removed in
any given geological age from the land by erosion, we have only to esti
mate the mass of the strata deposited in that age. Constrained by this
reasoning, the mind has no escape from the conclusion that the effects
of erosion have indeed been vast. If, then, these operations have
achieved such results, our wonder is transferred to the immensity of the
periods of time required to accomplish them ; for the processes are so
slow that the span of a life-time seems too small to render those results
directly visible. As we stand before the terrace cliffs and try to con-
ceive of them receding scores of miles by secular waste, we find the en-
deavor quite useless. There is, however, one error against which we must
guard ourselves. We must not conceive of erosion as merely sapping the
face of a straight serried wall a hundred miles long; the locus of the wall

DUTTOH.

THE GREAT DENUDATION. 97

receding parallel to its former position at the rate of a foot or a few feet
in a thousand years; the terrace back of its crest line remaining solid and
nncnt; the beds fchus dissolving edgewise nntii after the lapseof millions
ol centuries their terminal dills stand a hundred miles or more back of
their initial positions. The true story is told bv the Triassic terrace
ending in the Vermilion Cliffs. This terrace is literally sawed to pieces
with canons. There are dozens of these chasms opening at intervals o!
two or three miles along the front of the escarpment and setting far
back into its mass. Every one of them ramifies again and again until
they become an intricate net-work, like the libers of a leaf. Every canon
wall, throughout its trunk, branches, and fcwigs,and every alcove and
niche, becomes a dissolving face. Thus the lines and area of attack are
enormously multiplied. The front wall of the terrace is cut into prom-
ontories and bays. The interlacing of branch canons back of the wall
cuts off the promontories into detached buttes, and the buttes, attacked
on all sides, molder away. The rate of recession therefore is corre-
spondingly accelerated in its total effect.

The largeness of the area presents really no difficulty. The forces
which break up the rocks are of meteoric origin. The agency which car
ries off' the debris is the water running in the drainage channels. Surely
the meteoric forces which ravage the rocks of a township may ravage
equally the rocks of the county or state, provided only the conditions
are uniform over the larger and smaller areas. And what is the limit
to the length of a stream, the number of its branches and rills, and to
the quantity of water it may carry? It is not the area, then, which op-
presses us by its magnitude, but the vertical factor— the thickness of
the mass removed. But upon closer inspection the aspect of this factor
also will cease to be forbidding.

For if the rate of recession of a wall iifty feet high is one foot in a given
nnmberof years, what will be (ceteris paribus) therateof recession ina wall
a thousand feet high? Very plainly the rate will be the same.* If we
suppose two walls of equal length, composed of the same kind of rocks,
and situated under the same climate, but one of them much higher than
the other, it is obvious that the areas of wall-face will be proportional to
i heir altitudes. Tn order that the rates of recession may be equal, the
amount of material removed from*the higher one must be double that
removed from the other, and since the forces operating on the higher one
have twice the area of attack, they ought to remove from it a double
quantity, thus making the rates of recession equal. Iu the same way it

"The geologist will no doubt recognize that this is a simple and unqualified state-
ment of a result whioh is in reality very complex, and sometimes requiring qualifica-
tion. But a candid review of it in the light of established laws governing erosion will,
1 am confident, justify it for all purposes here contemplated Though some qualifying
conditions will appear when the subject is analyzed thoroughly, they are of no appli-
cation to this particular stage of the argument. The statement is amply true for the
proposition in hand, and it would be hardly practicable, and certainly very prolix, to
give here the full analysis of it.
7 G A

98 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

may be shown that the rate of recession is substantially independent of
the magnitude Of the cliff, whatever its altitude. Here a momentary
digression is necessary.

\\V have hitherto spoken of the recession of cliff's as if it comprised
the whole process of erosion, and have hardly alluded to the possible
degradation of the tlat surfaces of plateaus, terraces, and plains. Is it
meant that there is no degradation of the horizontal surfaces, and that
the waste of the land is wholly wrought by t lie decay of cliffs .' Approx-
imately that is the meaning, but some greater precision may be given to
the statement.

Erosion is the result of two complex groups of processes. The first
group comprises those which accomplish the disintegration of the rocks,
reducing them to fragments, pebbles, sand, and clay. The second com
prises those processes which remove the dCbris and carry it away to
another part of the world. The first is called disintegration ; t he second,
transportation. We need not attempt to study these processes in all
their scope and relations, but we may advert only to those considerations
which are of immediate concern. When the debris produced by the dis-
integration of rocks is left to accumulate upon a tlat surface it forms a
protecting mantle to the rocks beneath, and the disintegration is greatly
retarded, or even wholly stopped. In order that disintegration may go
on rapidly the ddbris must be carried away as rapidly as it forms. But
the efficiency of transportation depends upon the declivity. The greater
the slope the greater the power of water to transport. When the slope
is greater than 30° to 33° ("the angle of repose") loose matter cannot
lie upon the rocks, and shoots down until it finds a resting place. Hence
the greater the slope the more fully are the rocks exposed to the disin-
tegrating forces, and the more rapidly do they decay. This relation is
universal, applying to all countries, and explains how it comes about
that the attack of erosion is highly effective against the cliffs and steep
slopes, and has but a trilling effect upon tlat surfaces.

Keverting to the main argument, it now appears that erosion goes on
by the decay and removal of material from cliff's and slopes; that the
recession of high cliffs is as rapid as the recession of low ones, and that
the quantity of material removed in a given time increases with the al-
titudes of the cliffs and slopes. In other words, the thickness of the
strata removed in a given period of erosion should be proportional to the
amount of relief in the profiles of the country. Hut in the Plateau
country, and especially in the Grand Canon district, t hese reliefs are very
great. It is a region of giant cliffs and profound canons, and, as will ul-
timately appear, it has been so during a very long stretch of geological
time. The thickness of the strata removed from it is only proportional
to the values of those conditions which favor rapid erosion. In the fore
going discussion it may appear that the area of denudation in the Grand
Cafion district, though large, and the thickness of the strata denuded,

duttoh.] THE GREAT DENUDATION. 09

though very great, are not so excessive as to impose such a heavy burden
upon the credulity as the first announcement of the figures portended.

In drawing inferences from the stratification the geologist is obvi-
ously bound to presume that the strata cut oft' in the terraces extended
originally without a break until they reached some locality where the
conditions of deposition failed. There are two, and only two, cases to
be considered. The first case is that in which the extension is towards
the shore line of the sea or lake in which the strata were deposited. At
the shore line the strata, of course, end. In the present case no shore
line could have existed southward, between the terraces and the Aubrey
Cliffs, beyond the San Francisco Mountains. This is quite certain. We
know the countrvsowell that if there had been such a shore line in this
interval its traces would have been discovered. AYe are quite sure that
no such traces exist. The second casearises when sediments gradually
thin out seawards and either vanish entirely or become so thin that
their bulk is only nominal. We have already noted that the strata in
the terraces (p. 79) grow thinner from west to east, and we know that
the shore line of the marine basin, in which they were deposited, lay to
the west and northwest. But here we are considering their extensions
towards the south, and we already know that more than one hundred
miles in that direction was another part of the shore line surrounding
the basin trendingnorthwest and southeast. Supposing strata to atten-
uate as they recede from, and to thicken as they approach, their shore lines,
the case we are considering would perhaps be about as follows. South-
ward as far as the Grand Canon, i. c, halfway or thereabout between
the terraces and the southern shore, there might be some slight reason
for inferring a very little attenuation, but beyond the Grand Canon we
might with equal reason infer a thickening. But this reasoning is ob-
viously precarious, since the attenuation of strata as they approach or
recede from shore lines does not follow any rigorous law — does not con-
form to any definite proportion. The best and apparently the only use
we can make of it is rather of a negative character, leading us to infer
merely that the stratification does not offer any reason for presuming
that their original southward extensions were notably thinner than the
portions preserved in the terraces. But there is another class of facts
which is somewdiat more to the purpose.

Of the denuded formations, some outliers are preserved at a consid-
erable distance from the terraces. In the case of the Permian there is
no doubt. The great Carboniferous platform of the Grand Canon dist net
is spotted in many places with Permian remnants, though rarely is the
whole series preserved. One important remnant shows very nearly the
whole series — at Mount Logan, in the Uinkaret Plateau, near the Grand
Canon. A conspicuous knoll, called the Red Butte, south of the Kaibab
and about 30 miles from the San Francisco Mountains, also preserves a
large part of the series, and innumerable patches of lower Permian beds
are found on both sides of the great chasm. They show no attenuation

100 GRAM) CANON DISTRICT.

whatever, and indeed the Mount Logan mass is one of the thickest expo-
sures of Permian beds thus far discovered. The former extension of
this series over the entire district in full volume may therefore be re.
garded as proven. In the ease of the Trias the evidence is from this
point of view not quite so clear. South of the Vermilion Cliffs two or
three remnants of it have been seen. One lies in the Grand Wash, a
lateral valley joining the Colorado from the north just where it issues
from the lower end of the Grand Canon. Another has been recognized
by Mr. Gilbert under the protection of lavas in the gigantic; pile of
San FranciSCO Mountain. But in neither of them is the entire Triassic
series represented. These may be held to prove also the extension of
the Trias over the entire district, and they give no sign of any attenua-
tion in the beds preserved. But of the Jura and Cretaceous not a soli-
tary outlier has yet been detected at any considerable distance from
their principal terraces. As to these two later formations we can only
reason from general considerations. The Jura and Trias, wherever
found, appear to be merely different portions of one period of deposi-
tion; the physical conditions attending the accumulation of both appear
to have been almost identical. Nor have we any reason to doubt that
the same considerations apply to the Cretaceous and Eocene.

Still more forcibly is the same conclusion presented to us when we
come to the study of the faults and flexures. The Grand Canon district,
the High Plateaus, and indeed the entire Plateau country, has been
hoisted during Tertiary time far above the Sierra region lying west of
it. At the western border of the plateaus are found gigantic faults
where the strata have been sheared, and the country on the eastern
side presents beds lying thousands of feet higher than the continua-
tions of the same strata on the western side of the faults. These faults
have been studied, and the amounts of the displacements are very ap-
proximately known. Owing to the remarkably clear manner in which
all the facts are displayed, we are able, theoretically, to restore the
country to the position and configuration existing before these beds
were faulted and flexed. In this treatise, only the results can be given.
The discussion and treatment of the problem is too purely technical for
popular explanation. This restoration, so far as it has progressed, shows,
without reasonable doubt, that throughout Mesozoic time, and very
probably during a part of Tertiary time, the Carboniferous and Permian
strata of the Grand Canon district were horizontal and unbroken, the
greatest possible discrepancies being very small. Thus another and im-
portant point is gained, for it supports the conclusion that the configu-
ration of the Mesozoic sea-bottom, as well as its relations to the adjoin-
ing coasts, was, in the, middle and southern portions of the Grand Canon
district, favorable to the reception of the same mass of sediments as we
now find in the terraces of the High Plateaus.

The argument from the drainage system is, in principle, the same as
that applied to the San Rafael Swell, though different in details. The

BUTTON.

THE GREAT DENUDATION. 101

Colorado River and its tributaries entering the Grand Canon had their
origin at the time the country emerged from the waters and became
land. This was in early Tertiary time. The rivers then must have had
their courses laid out in conformity with the very feeble slopes of the
newly risen country and in conformity with the surfaces of the newest
strata. In the progress of Tertiary time this surface, originally as level
as the prairies of Illinois, or more so, began to deform by unequal up-
lifting; but the rivv rs remained unchanged, and some of them are How
ing to-day along the same routes as of old. Others have dried up, and
the very strata which contained their troughs have been swept away.
Those which remain occupy a very different relation to the strata from
that which they held at first. The tributaries on the north side now
run against the dips; those on the south side run icith the dips, or nearly
so. But the change has been in the attitudes of the strata and not in
the positions of the rivers. And if we theoretically reconstruct the at-
titudes of the strata to conform to the courses of the drainage channels
we reach a reconstruction exactly the same as that which we deduced
from a restoration of the faults and flexures.

Thus the stratification, the outliers, the faults and flexures, and the
drainage all yield their quotas of testimony to the great fact of denuda-
tion, and indicate that at some initial epoch the whole Mesozoic system
and the lower Eocene once extended over the entire platform of the Grand
Canon district, with a thickness varying somewhat, no doubt, but on the
whole differing but little, from that which we now find in the terraces of
the High Plateaus. It is to be noted that the evidence of this former
extension is more complete in the older formations than in the younger
ones. In the case of the Permian it is quite perfect; in the case of the
Trias very nearly so; in the case of the Jura it is very little less cogent
than in that of the Trias; and in the Cretaceous practical certainty is
exchanged for a very high degree of probability barely distinguishable
from certainty. In the case of the Eocene there still remains a strong
probability, but there is room for reservation. Xo reason to the con-
trary can be shown at present, and it may be regarded as one of those
cases where "the tail goes with the hide"; but we cannot promise that
future research will not develop reasons for a different conclusion. As
the evidence now stands we are impelled to accept the full extension of
the Eocene with some reservations, arising not from conflicting evidence,
but from want of perfection in the evidence known to us.

1JASE LEVELS OF EROSION.

In his popular narrative of Explorations of the Colorado River, Powell
has employed the above term to give precision to an idea which is ol
much importance in physical geology. The idea in some form or other

102 .GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

lias, no doubt, occurred to many geologists, but, so far as known to me,
it had not before received such definite treatment nor been so fully and
justly emphasized. It may be explained as follows.

Whenever a smooth country lies at an altitude but little above the
level of the sea, erosion proceeds at a rate so slow as to be merely nomi-
nal. The rivers cannot corrade their channels. Their declivities are
very small, the velocities of their waters very feeble, and their trans-
porting power is so much reduced that they can do no more than urge
along the detritus brought into their troughs from highlands around
their margins. Their transporting power is just equal to the load they
have to cany, and there is no surplus left to wear away their bottoms.
All that erosion can now do is to slowly carry off the soil formed
on the slopes of mounds, banks, and hillocks, which faintly diversify
the broad surrounding expanse. The erosion is at its base-level or very
nearly so. An extreme case is the State of Florida. All regions are
tending to base-levels of erosion, and if the time be long enough each
region will, in its turn, approach nearer and nearer, and at last sensibly
reach it. The approach, however, consists in an infinite series of ap-
proximations like the approach of a hyperbola to tangency with its
asymptote. Thus far, however, there is the implied assumption that
the region undergoes no change of altitude with reference to sea-level ;
that it is neither elevated nor depressed by subterranean forces. Many
regions do remain without such vertical movements through a long
succession of geological periods. But the greater portion of the exist-
ing land of the globe, so far as known, has been subject to repeated
throes of elevation or depression. Such a change, if of notable amount,
at length destroys the pre-existing relation of a region to its base-level of
erosion. If it is depressed it becomes immediately an area of deposi-
tion. If it is elevated new energy is imparted to the agents and ma-
chinery of erosion. The declivities of the streams are increased, giving
an excess of transporting power which sweeps the channels clear of
debris; corrasion begins; new topographical features are literally
carved out of the land in high relief; long rapid slopes or cliffs are
generated and vigorously attacked by the destroying agents ; and the
degradation of the country proceeds with energy.

It is not necessary that a base-level of erosion should lie at extremely
low altitudes. Thus a large interior basin drained by a trunk river,
across the lower portions of which a barrier is slowly rising, is a case
in point. For a time the river is tasked to cut down its barrier as rap-
idly as it rises. This occasions slackwater in the courses above the
barrier and stops corrasion, producing ultimately a local base-level.
Another case is the Great Basin of Nevada. It has no outlet, because
its streams sink in the sand or evaporate from Salinas. Its valley bot-
toms are rather below base-level than above it. The general result of
causes tending to bring a region to an approximate base-level of erosion
is the obliteration of its inequalities.

ntJTTOH.] BASE LEVELS OF EROSION. 103

During the progress of the great denudation of the Grand Canon Dis-
trict the indications are abundant that its interior spaces have occupied
for a time the relation of an approximate base-level of erosion. Through-
out almost the entire stretch of Tertiary and Quaternary time the region
lias been rising, and in the aggregate the elevation has become immense,
varying from 11,000 to 18,000 feet in different portions. But it seems
that the movement has not been at a uniform rate. It appears to have
proceeded through alternations of activity and repose. Whether we can
point to more than one period of quiescence may be somewhat doubtful.
but we can point decisively to one. It occurred probably in late Miocene
or early Pliocene time, and while it prevailed the great Carboniferous
platform was denuded of most of its inequalities, and was planed down
to a very flat expanse. Since that period the relation has been destroyed
by a general upheaval of the entire region several thousands of feet
The indications of this will appear when we come to the study of the
interior spaces of the Grand Canon District and of the Grand Canon
itself. To this study we now proceed.

C IT A P T E R V .

Till] TOROWEAP AND UINKAHET.

The present chapter will contain an account of a journey from the
village Kanab to the Toroweap Valley, and a description of the middle
portion of the Grand Canon; also of the Uinkaret Plateau. Kanab is the
usual rallying place and base of operations of the survey in these parts,
being located on the only living stream between the Virgen and the
Paria.

The first stage of the journey from Kanab to Pipe Spring is an easy
one. It leads southwestward to a gap cut through the low Permian
terrace, and out into the open desert beyond. The road, well traveled
and easy, then turns westward and at length reaches the spring twenty
miles from Kanab. Pipe Spring is situated at the foot of the southern-
most promontory of the Vermilion Cliffs, and is famous throughout
Southern Utah as a watering place. Its How is copious and its water
is the purest and best throughout that desolate region. Ten years ago
the deserl spaces outspreading to the southward were covered with
abundant grasses, affording ricli pasturage to horses and cattle. To-
day hardly a blade of grass is to be found within ten miles of the spring,
unless upon the crags and mesas of the Vermilion Cliffs behind it. The
horses and cattle have disappeared, and the bones of many of the latter
are bleached upon the plains in front of it. The cause of the failure of
pasturage is twofold. There is little doubt that during the last ten or
twelve years the climate of the surrounding country has grown more
arid. The occasional summer showers which kept the grasses alive
seldom come now, and through the long summer and autumn droughts
the grasses perished even to their roots before they had time to seed.
All of them belong to varieties which reproduce from seed, and whose
loots live but three or four years. Even if there had been no drought
the feeding of cattle would have impoverished and perhaps wholly de-
stroyed the grass by cropping it clean before the seeds were mature, as
has been the case very generally throughout Utah and Nevada.

Northeastward the Vermilion Cliffs extend in endless perspective to-
wards Kanab, and beyond to the Paria. Northwestward, with growing
magnitude, they extend towards the Virgen, ever forming a mighty
background to the picture. To the southward stretches the desert,
blank, lifeless, and as expressionless as the sea. For five or six miles
south of the Pipe Spring promontory there is a gentle descending slope,
and thence onward the surface feebly ascends through a distance of
lot

m;rr0N I CROSSING THE DESERT. 105

thirty miles to the brink of the Grand Cafion. Thus the range of vision
is wide, for we overlook a gentle depression of great, extent. Though
the general impression conveyed is that of a smooth or slightly modu-
lated country, yet we command a far greater expanse than would be
possible among the prairies. To the southeastward the Kaibab looms
up, seemingly at no great distance, and to the southwestward the Hat
roof of Mount Trumbull is more than a blue cloud in the horizon. To-
wards this latter mountain we take a straight course. The first few
miles lie across drifting sands bare of all vegetation. The air is like a
furnace, but so long as the water holds out the heat is not enervating
aud brings no lassitude. Everything is calm and still, except here and
there a hot whirling blast which sends up a tall, slender column of dust
diffusing itself in the air. At a slow pace the sand-hills at length are
passed and we enter upon a hard, firm soil, over which we move more
rapidly. Just here, and for three or four miles in either direction, the
Permian terrace has been obliterated. It has been beveled oft' by erosion
and buried beneath the wash brought down from the foot of the Vermilion
Olitl's to the northward. But seven miles from Pipe Spring, the Per-
mian terrace springs up out of the earth, scarped by its characteristic
cliff. Stretching northwestward it increases in altitude, becoming at last
800 to 1,000 feet high. At its summit is seen the Shinarump conglom-
erate, of a pale brown color, and beneath are the gorgeous hues of the
shales. Nothing can surpass the dense, rich, and almost cloying splen-
dor of the red-brown seen in these shales. They suggest the color of old
mahogany, but are much more luminous and quite uniform. Under
them are belts of chocolate, slate, lavender, pale Indian red. and white.
Very wonderful, too, is the evenness of the bedding, which is brought
out in great clearness and sharpness by the etching of minute layers of
clays holding selenite. Between the shales ami overlying conglomerate
careful scrutiny enables us to detect an unconformity by erosion with-
out any unconformity of dip. As stated in a preceding chapter, Mr.
Wolcott fixed provisionally the separating horizon between the Permian
and Trias at this unconformable contact.

Along the route the vegetation is scanty indeed. Several forms of
cactus are seen looking very diseased and mangy, and remnants of low
desert shrubs browsed to death by cattle. Yet strangely enough there
is one plant and one alone that seems to flourish. It is the common
sunflower [Eelianthus lenticulari.s), found anywhere from Maine to Ari
zona, and seeming indifferent to the vicissitudes of climate.

About IS miles from Pipe Spring the trail leads gently down into a
broad shallow valley known as the Wild Baud Pockets. The drainage
from the fronts of the Permian cliffs now far to the northward here col-
lects into a gulch, which gradually deepens and becomes a tributary of
Kanab Canon. In every stream-bed may be found many depressions
which would hold water even though the sources of supply were cut oft'.
This is as true of wet-weather channels as of perennial streams. After

10G GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

the infrequent showers, and after the surface waters have ceased to run,
the bed of the stream will still retain pools of water, provided the bottom
of it is of a consistency which will prevent it from filtering away. To
these pools the people of the west have given the name of " water-pock-
ets." They are very common in the stream-beds which bear away the
wash from the Permian and lower Triassic shales. These shales yield a
very line impervious clay, which forms an excellent "puddling "for water
holes and basins. The Wild Hand Pockets have received their name
from the fact that they are the resort of bands of wild horses that roam
over these deserts, far from human haunts, ranging from spring to spring,
which they visit by stealth Only at night, and never so long as they can
i'ind chance water in these and other pockets. Beyond the Wild Band
Valley there is a slight ascent to a rocky platform, consisting of the
summit beds of the Carboniferous. In the course of 20 miles we have
crossed the entire Permian series, which now lies to the north of us. A
few stunted cedars, most of which are dead or dying of drought, art-
scattered over this platform and give us until nightfall some slight
shelter from the sun. It is as good a camping place as we are likely
to find, and if we are fortunate enough to reach it after a copious shower,
the hollows and basins in the flat rocks may contain a scanty supply of
clear rain-water. It is a good locality, also, from which we may over-
look the outspreading desert, which is not without charms, however
repulsive in most respects.

To the northward rises the low escarpment of the Permian, forming a
color picture which is somewhat indistinct through distance, but weird
because of its strange colors and still stranger forms. Beyond and in
the far distance rise the towering fronts of the Vermilion Cliffs, ablaze
with red light from the sinking sun. To the eastward they stretch into
illimitable distance, growing paler but more refined in color until the
last visible promontory seems to merge its purple into the azure of the
evening sky. Across the whole eastern quarter of the horizon stretches
the long level summit of the Kaibab as straight and unbroken as the
rim of the ocean. To the southwest ward rises the basaltic plateau of
Mount Trumbull, now presenting itself with somewhat imposing propor-
tions. Around it a great multitude of basaltic cinder cones toss up
their ominous black waves almost as high as Trumbull itself. Their
tumultuous profiles and gloomy shades form a strong contrast with the
rectilinear outlines and vivid colors of the region roundabout.

At dawn we move onward, reaching soon the summit of a hill which
descends two or three hundred feet to a broad fiat depression called the
Wonsits Plain. It is a smooth and very barren expanse, dotted with a
few moldering buttes of Upper Carboniferous rocks, now wasted to
their foundations. The plain is about seven miles in width, and on the
further side rises a low mesa of great extent capped with basalt. It is
the Uinkaret. Beyond the nearer throng of basaltic cones Mount Trum-
bull rises with a striking aspect dominating strongly the entire western

mjttok.J CROSSING THE DESERT. 107

landscape. The smaller cones are now seen to be very numerous, and
all of them are apparently perfect in form, as if time had wrought no
great ravage among them. The lapilli and pepcrino with which they
are covered, has become dull red by the oxidation of the iron, and (his
peculiar color is easily recognized though the cones are still far away.
Just before reaching the basaltic mesa we must make our choice between
two routes to the Toroweap, one direct, the other very circuitous. No
spring is to be found until we reach the further side of Mount Trumbull,
but we know of a large water-pocket on this side, which has never been
known to dry up. The spring water is sure to be good, but the water
in the pocket will depend for its quality upon the length of time which
has passed since the last heavy rain. Let us here choose the short cl-
one, and go to the water-pocket.

Ascending the mesa which rises abruptly about 200 feet above the
Wonsits Plain, we find ourselves at once upon the basalt. The ground
is paved with cinders and fragments half buried in soil, the debris of
decaying lava sheets. These sheets are rarely of any great thickness,
seldom exceeding 30 or 40 feet, and often much less, and none of the
individual eruptions of lava seem to have covered any very great
expanse. Probably the area covered by the largest would be less than
a square mile. They show no perceptible differences in composition or
texture, and all are basalts of the most typical variety— very black and
ferruginous in the unweathered specimens and speckled with abundant
olivine. At the time of eruption they appear to have been in a state of
perfect liquidity, spreading out very thin and flowing rapidly and with
• ease. In none of them has erosion wrought much havoc, though here
and there some local destruction has been effected, most conspicuously
upon the edges of the principal mesa where the sheets have been under-
mined and their fragments scattered upon the plain below. The cones.
which stand thick around us, are still in good preservation. They are
of ordinary composition— mere piles of cinders thrown out of central
vents and dropping around it. The fume and froth of the lava surfaces,
the spongy inflated blocks, the lapilli and peperino, are not greatly
changed, though all of them here show the oxidation of the iron. We
wonder what their age may be; what time has elapsed since they vom-
ited lire and steam. But there is no clew — no natural record by which
such events can be calendared. Historically they have doubtless stood
in perfect repose for very many centuries. Not a trace of activity of any
kind is visible, and they are as perfectly quiescent as the dead volcanoes
oftheAuvergne or of Scotland. Geologically, they are extremely recent;
yet even here where historic antiquity merges into geologic recency the
one gives us no measure of the other.

Following a course which winds among the silent cones and over
rough, flat surfaces of lava beds half buried in drifting sands, we at
length reach the border of a slight depression, into which we descend.
It is hardly noteworthy as a valley just here, and might be confounded

108 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

with any one of the innumerable shallow-water courses which oecui
round about; only when we look beyond we see it growing broader and
much deeper. It is the head of the Toroweap. Upon its smooth bottom
is a soft clayey soil, in which desert shrubs and stunted sage-brush grow
in some abundance. Here and there a cedar, dwarfed indeed, but yet
alive, displays a welcome green, and upon the valley slopes are a few
sprays of grass. The valley bottom descends at a noticeable rate to the
southward* and as we put the miles behind us we find the banks on
either side rising in height, becoming steeper, and at last displaying
rocky ledges. In the course of six or seven miles the left side has be-
come a wall 700 feet high, while the other side, somewhat lower, is much
broken and craggy. Huge piles of basalt lie upon'the mesa beyond,
sheet upon sheet, culminating in a cluster of large cones. At length
the course of the valley slightly deflects to the left, and as we clear a
shoulder of the eastern wall, which has hitherto masked its continuation,
a grand vista breaks upon the sight. The valley stretches away to the
southward, ever expanding in width ; the walls on either side increase
in altitude, and assume profiles of wonderful grace and nobility. Far
in the distance they betoken a majesty and grandeur quite unlike any-
thing hitherto seen. With vast proportions are combined simplicity,
symmetry, and grace, and an architectural eilect as precise and definite
as any to be found in the terraces. And yet these walls differ in style
from the Trias and Jura as much as the Trias and Jura differ from each
other. In the background the vista terminates at a mighty palisade,
st retching directly across the axis of vision. Though more than 20 miles
distant it reveals to us suggestions of grandeur which awaken feelings .
of awe. We know instinctively that it is a portion of the wall of the
Grand Canon.

The western side of the valley is here broken down into a long slope
descending from the cones clustered around the base of Mount Trum-
bull, and covered with broad flows of basalt. Turning out of tin'
valley we ascend the lava bed, which has a very moderate slope, and
about a mile from the valley we find the Witches' W r ater Pocket. In
every desert the watering places are memorable, and this one is no ex-
ception. It is a weird spot. Around it are the desolate Phlegnean
fields, where jagged masses of black lava still protrude through rusty,
decaying cinders. Patches of soil, thin and coarse, sustain groves of
cedar and pinon. Beyond and above are groups of cones, looking as
if they might at any day break forth in renewed eruption, and over all
rises the tabular mass of Mount Trumbull. Upon its summit are seen
the yellow pines (P. ponderosa), betokening a cooler and a moister
clime. The pool itself might well be deemed the abode of witches. A
channel half-a-dozen yards deep and twice as wide, has been scoured in
the basalt by spasmodic streams, which run during the vernal rains.
Such a stream cascading into it has worn out of the solid lava a pool
twenty feet long, nearly as wide, and live or six feet deep. Every flood

ODTTOM. i

THE TOROWEAP VALLKY.

109

Fig. 7.— I

Witches' Water Poeket.

(ills it with water, which is good enough when recent, but horrible when
old. Here, then, we camp for the night.

Filling the kegs at daylight, we descend again into the Toroweap
and move southward. Our attention is strongly attracted by the wall
upon the eastern side. Steadily it increases its mass and proportions.
Soon it becomes evident that its profile is remarkably constant. We
did not notice this at first, for we saw in the upper valley only the sum-
mit of the palisade; but as the valley cuts deeper in the earth the plan
and system begin to unfold. At the summit is a vertical ledge, next
beneath a long Mansard slope, then a broad plinth, and last, and greater
than all, a long, sweeping curve, descending gracefully to the plain be-
low. Just opposite to us the pediments seem half buried, or rather half
risen out of the valley alluvium. But beyond they rise higher and
higher until in the far distance the profile is complete. In this escarp-
ment are excavated alcoves with openings a mile wide. As soon as we
reach the first one new features appear. The upper ledge suddenly
breaks out into a wealth of pinnacles and statues standing in thick ranks.
They must be from 100 to 250 feet high, but now the height of the wall
is more than a thousand feet, and they do not seem colossal. Indeed,

V. & GEOLOGICAL SDBVEY.

ANNUAL REPORT 1881. i'L. Will.

.... > . • . . A \-

\

-

hit;

r-:r ;...•

-

- .

; . .. '

'•••,-- ji&4P v/#''.^<?

1

1 :* 5 ?©tf!E

M

:*-v..

-- -^ -2?>"

<r

... — *rj^^-

Of.

K*&»z.

■ 1. r w

\ (s ••.

p

•

I-AXORAMA FROM MOUNT TRUMBULL.

Upper view looking East, with the Grand Canon in the distance. Lower view looking down the Toroweap.

HO GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

they l.x.k like a mere band of intricate fretwork— a line of balustrade
on the summit of a noble facade. Between the alcoves the projecting
pediments present gable-enda towards the valley plain. Vet whitherso-
ever the curtain wall extends the same profile greets the eyes. The
architect has adhered to his design as consistently and persistently as
the braiders of the Thebaid or of the Acropolis. As we pass alcove
after alcove, and pediment after pediment, they grow loftier, wider and
deeper, and their decoration becomes more ornate. At Length we pass
one which is vast indeed. It is recessed back from the main front three-
fourths of a mile, and shows three sides of an oblong- room with walls
1,800 feet in height. The fourth side is obliterated and the space opens
into the broad valley. Wonderfully rich and profuse are the pinnacles
and statues along the upper friezes. The fancy is kindled as the eye
wanders through the inclosure.

We look across the valley, which is here three miles in width, and
behold the other wall, which presents an aspect wholly different, but quite
as interesting. The western wall of the Toroweap is here lower than t he
eastern, but still is more than a thousand feet high. The geologist soon
surmises that along the valley bottom runs a fault which drops the
country on the west several hundred feet, and the conjecture soon
becomes certainty. Above and beyond the western escarpment is the
platform of the Uinkaret Plateau. Upon its summit is a throng of large
basaltic cones in perfect preservation. Streams of lava larger than any
hitherto seen have poured from their vents, flooding many a square
mile of mesa land, and in the wide alcoves they have reached the brink
of the wall and cascaded over it. Still pouring down the long taluses
they have reached the valley bottom below and spread out in wide fields,
disappearing underneath the clayey alluvium, which has buried much of
their lower portions. The appearance of these old lava cascades, a mile
or more wide, a thousand feet high, and black as Erebus, is striking in
the extreme. There are live of these basaltic cataracts, each consist-
ing of many individual coulees. Between them the bold pediments of
brightly-colored Carboniferous strata jut out into the valley.

At length we approach the lower end of the Toroweap. The scenery
here becomes colossal. Its magnitude is by no means its most impress-
ive feature, but precision of the forms. The dominant idea ever before
the mind is the architecture displayed in the profiles. It is hard to
realize that this is the work of the blind forces of nature. We feel like
mere insects crawling along the street of city flanked with immense
temples, or as Lemuel Gulliver might have felt in revisiting the capital
of Brobdingnag, and finding it deserted. At the foot of the valley the
western wall is nearly 1,500 feet high, the eastern about 2,000, and the
interval separating them is about three miles. Suddenly they turn at
right angles to right and left, and become the upper wall of the Grand
Canon of the Colorado. The Toroweap now opens into the main pas-
sageway of the great chasm. The view, however, is much obstructed.

DOTTON.]

GRAND CANON AT THE TOROWEAP.

Ill

Flo. 8.— The brink of tin-. Inner Gorge at the foot of tho Torovcap, looking east.

At the foot of the eastern gable is a medley of rocky lodges of red
sandstone, while around the base of the western gable are large masses
of basalt reaching more than half-way across the valley. In front rises
a crater, which is about GOO feet high, seemingly a mere knoll in the
midst of this colossal scenery. Beyond it, and five miles distant, rises
the palisade which forms the southern upper wall of the chasm, stretching
athwart the line of vision interminably in either direction. Its altitude
is apparently the same as that of the palisade above us, and its profile
is also identical. Climbing among the rocky ledges which lie at the
base of the escarpment, we at length obtain a stand-point which enables
us to gain a preliminary view of the mighty avenue. To the eastward
it stretches in vanishing perspective forty miles or more. Between sym-
metric walls 2,000 feet high and five miles apart is a plain, which in

11. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

ANNUAL REPORT 1881. FL. XXIV.

'. , -.1- -,.V -!

V-

s X.,- .X.

i^JH^M - - -

■*J*

iT^^aW.

<tll

■ -

■' ! v . '

.■■ , -

Z,-* • - ~--- ^ * •- . v ' .''

■»

• - ■ -. ...

. '■

'*■•++*.■-■% .'

T

1

... ^ » : ,,.

J ; - - i .

.1 -,..~>^Vv«<' ;

r---.-.. • ,.

i. .

, . . ..

> r ■ ■ ; •

:■..:

' . -" "

'■■'..., ' • .

■

>

.■-■•>■

'ill,

h:

Imp ISS^:' ■*

m\\ V'^viv ■ ■■'■

'.v

'

*! 3

i etc

s.- '**" "

^'^-fr

- ; i«

:'

">.

X

> '

(:■

HJIfc^LS-

'-:

v

fr;

THE (1RAND CANON AT THE FOOT OF THE TOROWEAP—LOOKING EAST.

112 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

comparison with its limiting dill's might be regarded aa smooth, but
which in reality is diversified by rocky hammocks and basins, and by
hillocks where patches of soil give life to scattered cedars and pihons.
Of the inner chasm nothing as yet is to be seen. Moving outward into
this platform we find its surface to be mostly bare rock, with broad shal-
low basins etched in them, which hold water after the showers. There
are thousands of these pools, and when the showers have passed they
gleam and glitter in the sun like innumerable mirrors. As we move
outward towards the center of the grand avenue the immensity and
beautiful proportions of the walls develop. The vista, towards the east
lengthens out and vanishes against the blue ramp of the Kaibab, which
lies as a cloud upon the horizon. To the west the view is less symmet-
ric and regular, and the eye wanders vaguely among cliffs and buttes
of stupendous magnitude, displaying everywhere the profile with which
we have become of late familiar. Much of the distance towards the
west is obstructed by the crater, but the portions in view bewilder us by
the great number of objects presented, and oppress us by their magni-
tudes. At a distance of about two miles irom the base of the northern
wall we come suddenly upon the inner chasm. We are not conscious of
its proximity until we are within a few yards of it. In less than a min-
ute after we have recognized the crest of the farther wall of this abyss
we crane over its terrible brink and gaze upon the waters of the river
full 3,000 feet below.

The scene before us is a type of the Grand Canon throughout those por-
tions which extend through the Kanab, Uinkaret, and Sheavwits Plateaus.
The plan and section here presented are quite simple. They consist of
a broad upper chasm from five to six miles in width with walls varying
in altitude but little from 2,000 feet. Between these escarpments is a
rocky plain, rough indeed, but in the overpowering presence of such
walls seeming relatively smooth and uniform. In this floor is cut the
inner chasm 3,000 feet deep and from 3,500 to 4,000 feet wide from crest
to crest. The true profile will be best understood by consulting the dia-
gram, Fig. 10, which is drawn to scale. The strata in which the chasm is
excavated are all of Carboniferous age excepting three or four hundred
feet at the bottom of the gorge. The strata beneath the Carboniferous
are at present believed to be Lower Silurian, and their contact with the
Carboniferous is unconformable, both by dip and by erosion. In the up-
per part of the palisades which form the wall of the upper chasm we
find at the summit two series of limestones. The upper contains an
abundance of siliceous matter, one portion of which is intimately dis-
seminated through the mass while another portion is aggregated into
myriads of cherty nodules varying from two to ten inches in diameter.
The lower one is a purer limestone with few nodules. The cherty mem-
bers form a nearly vertical band at the summit of the wall; the purer
members form a Mansard slope beneath, covered with talus. The total
thickness of the limestones is about 700 to 750 feet. Beneath them come

DUTTOH.]

GRAND CANON AT THE TOROWEAP.

113

Fig. 9. — The l>i ink of the Inner (ior^o at tho foot of the Toroweap, looking west.

sandstones a little more than 250 feet thick, which form everywhere a
vertical plinth or frieze. They are very adamantine in texture, and one
of the members, about 160 feet thick, is in every exposure seen to be
uniformly cross-bedded. Under the cross-bedded sandstone is a mass
of thinly bedded and almost shaly sandstones, having- an aggregate
thickness very closely approximating to 1,000 feet. They are of an in-
tensely brilliant red color, but are, in greatest part, covered with a
heavy talus of imperishable cherty nodules, fragments of the cross-
bedded sandstones, and spalls of limestone shot down from above. The
color of these is pale gray, with occasionally a yellowish or creamy tinge.
8 g A

114

GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

A.

•/.

The brilliant red sandstones form the long curved slope which descends
from the plinth of cross-bedded sandstone to the plain below.

The walls of the inner gorge have at the summit about 325 feet of hard
sandstone of a brown red color. Beneath the sandstone are about 1,800
feet of impure limestone in layers of the most massive description. Very
few such ponderous beds of limestone are found y &
in any part of the world. The color is deep
red with a purplish tone, but the brilliancy
of the coloring is notably weakened by weath-
ering. Still lower are red-brown sandstones r§
again having a dark and strong shade and lying I 8,
in very massive beds. The strata forming the -="
walls of the outer chasm from the summit to of
the plain below are designated the Aubrey |-
group, and this is again subdivided at the base |s.
of the cross-bedded plinth into Upper and 1»
Lower Aubrey groups. The two subdivisions ȣ
are believed to be the equivalents, in age, of rs 1
the Coal Measures of Pennsylvania and Eng- | ©
land. The strata disclosed in the inner gorge S&
correspond in age to the Lower Carboniferous 3-h

of those countries
Red Wall group.

and are here termed the
Some uncertainty exists

5 *

regarding the beds which lie at the base of "i<
the conformable series deep downin the chasm, §.f
but they are regarded at present as being just g '
what they seem and just what they would nat- Id
urally be inferred to be — a part of the Car- P
boniferous system. Of the strata at the bot- z>
torn of the canon, we shall have more to say \ \
hereafter. They are regarded at present as f ~
being of Lower Silurian or Primordial age.

The observer who, unfamiliar with plateau
scenery, stands for the first time upon the
brink of the inner gorge, is almost sure to
view his surroundings with commingled feel-
ings of disappointment and perplexity. The
fame of the chasm of the Colorado is great ; but
so indefinite and meager have been the descriptions of it that the imagina-
tion is left to its own devices in framing a mental conception of it. And
such subjective pictures are of course wide of the truth. When he first
visits it the preconceived notion is at once dissipated and the mind is
slow to receive a new one. The creations of his own fancy no doubt are
clothed with a vague grandeur and beauty, but not with the grandeur and
beauty of nature. When the reality is before him the impression bears
some analogy to that produced upon the visitor who for the first time

6£

o a

dottoh.] GRAND CANON AT THE TOEOWEAP. 115

enters St. Peter's Church at Rome. He expected to be profoundly awe.
struck by the unexampled dimensions, and to feel exalted by the beauty
of its proportions and decoration. lie forgets that the human mind itself
is of small capacity and receives its impressions slowly, by labored pro-
cesses of comparison. So, too, at the brink of the chasm, there comes
at first a feeling of disappointment ; it does not seem so grand as we
expected. At length we strive to make comparisons. The river is
clearly defined below, but it looks about large enough to turn a village
grist-mill; yet we know it is a stream three or four hundred feet wide
Its surface looks as motionless as a lake seen from a distant mountain-
top. We know it is a rushing torrent, The ear is strained to hear the
roar of its waters and catches it faintly at intervals as the eddying
breezes waft it upwards; but the sound seems exhausted by the distance.
We perceive dimly a mottling of light and shadow upon the surface of
the stream, and the flecks move with a barely perceptible eloud-like
motion. They are the fields of white foam lashed up at the foot of some
cataract and sailing swiftly onward.

Perhaps the first notion of the reality is gained when we look across
the abyss to the opposite crest-line. It seems as if a strong, nervous
arm could hurl a stone against the opposing wall-face; but in a moment
we catch sight of vegetation growing upon the very brink. There are
trees in scattered groves which we might at first have mistaken for sage
or desert furze. Here at length we have a stadium or standard of com-
parison which serves for the mind much the same purpose as a man
standing at the base of one of the sequoias of the Mariposa grove. And
now the real magnitudes begin to unfold themselves, and as the atten-
tion is held firmly the mind grows restive under the increasing burden.
Every time the eye ranges up or down its face it seems more distant
and more vast. At length we recoil, overburdened with the perceptions
already attained and yet half vexed at the inadequacy of our faculties
to comprehend more.

The magnitude of the chasm, however, is by no means the most im-
pressive element of its character ; nor is the inner gorge the most im-
pressive of its constituent parts. The thoughtful mind is far more deeply
moved by the splendor and grace of Nature's architecture. Forms so
new to the culture of civilized races and so strongly contrasted with those
which have been the ideals of thirty generations of white men cannot
indeed be appreciated after the study of a single hour or day. The first
conception of them may not be a pleasing one. They may seem merely
abnormal, curious, and even grotesque. But he who fancies that Nature
has exhausted her wealth of beauty in other lands strangely underesti-
mates her versatility and power. In tin's far-off desert are forms which
surprise us by their unaccustomed character. We find at first no place
for them in the range of our conventional notions. But as they become
familiar we find them appealing to the aesthetic sense as powerfully as
any scenery that ever invited the pencil of Claude or of Turner.

116 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

The inner gorge, as we sit upon its brink, is indeed a mighty spectacle ;
but as we withdraw a little, it fades out of view, and, strangely enough,
the sublimity of the scene is not very greatly impaired. It is, after all,
a mere detail, and the outer chasm is the all-engrossing feature. On
either side its palisades stretch away to the horizon. Their fronts wander
in and out, here throwing out a gable, there receding into a chamber, or
gaping widely to admit the entrance of a lateral chasm. The profile is
ever the same. It has nothing in common with the formless, chaotic;
crags, which are only big and rough, but is definite, graceful, architect-
ural, and systematic. The width of the space inclosed between the
upper walls is one of the most essential elements of the grandeur. It
varies from five to six miles. If it were narrower the effect would be
impaired; nor could it be much wider without diluting and weakening
the general effect. This proportion seems quite just. It is a common
notion that the distinctive and overruling feature of the great chasm is
its narrowness relatively to its depth. ]STo greater mistake could be
made. Our highest conceptions of grandeur are most fully realized
when we can see the greatest mass. We must have amplitude in all of
the three dimensions, distance, breadth, and depth, and that spectacle is
in point of magnitude the grandest which has the threedimcnsions so pro-
portioned and combined as to make the most of them. Another common
and mistaken idea is that the chasm is pervaded by a deep, solemn gloom.
The truth is almost the reverse. In the depths of the inner gorge there
is a suggestion of gloom, but even in the narrower portions there is
seldom less than sixty degrees of sky from crest to crest, and a hundred
and sixty along the track of the river. In the outer chasm the scene is
unusually bright. The upper half of the palisades have a pale, ashy,
or pearl-gray color, which is very lustrous, and this sometimes gives place
to a creamy or Naples yellow tint in the frieze of cross-bedded sand-
stone. The Lower Aubrey sandstones are bright red, but they are in
great part masked by the talus shot down from the pale gray limestones
above, and peep out in lustrous spots where the curtain of the talus is
drawn aside. There is nothing gloomy about such colors. Under a
burning sun that is rarely clouded they have a brilliancy seldom seen
in any rocks, and only surpassed by the sugary whiteness of the Jurassic
sandstone or the brilliant red of the Vermilion Cliffs.

Directly in the southward prolongation of the axis of the Toroweap
Valley there stands a basaltic cinder-cone immediately upon the brink
of the inner gorge. Its altitude above the surrounding plain is 580
feet. The summit is readily gained, and it is an admirable stand-point
from which the entire panorama may be viewed. We named it Vulcan's
Throne. To the eastward about forty miles of the. main chasm are
well in view. The altitude of the cone, though small in comparison
with surrounding objects, is sufficient to bring into view about twelve
miles of the opening of the inner gorge, while in the foreground its
depths are seen. To the westward the scenery is much more broken and

duttos ] GRAND CANON AT THE TOROWEAP. 117

diversified. The chasm is seen through the entire stretch it) the Uin-
karet Plateau and reaching a few miles into the Sheavwits. But about
twenty miles westward it makes a southward turn and disappears.
From the north the Toroweap Valley descends from near Mount Trum-
bull. It is cut down only to the base of the upper canon wall and
opens into the main chasm on the level of the plain above the inner
gorge. There is reason to believe that at some prior epoch it was cut
a few hundred feet deeper than its present floor, and was subsequently
built up by many floods of basalt coming from the cones on the Uinkarct
and by considerable quantities of alluvium washed from its cliffs and
overlooking mesas. On the south side of the Grand Canon is a valley
quite the counterpart of the Toroweap. It enters the main chasm directly
opposite to the Toroweap, so that the two form the arms of a transept,
the main chasm being regarded as the nave. Vulcan's Throne is situ
ated almost exactly at the intersection of the axes of nave and transept.

It would be difficult to find anywhere else in the world a spot yield-
ing so much subject-matter for the contemplation of the geologist:
certainly there is none situated in the midst of such dramatic and
inspiring surroundings. The chasm itself, with its marvelous story of
erosion, and the two lateral valleys adding their quotas of information
are grand subjects indeed; but other themes are disclosed which arc
scarcely less surprising and suggestive. The cone stands immediately
upon the line of a large fault. And never was a fault and its conse-
quences more clearly displayed. The Toroweap fault is one of six
which at wide intervals traverse the Grand Canon district from north
to south with a rude approximation to parallelism. It is the smallest
of the six. Twenty miles north of the chasm no trace of it is visible. Its
beginning there is small, but as it approaches the chasm it increases in
the amount of displacement; and at the crossing of the river the shear
or "throw" is between 000 and 700 feet. In the wall-face of the inner
gorge it is disclosed as clearly as a draughtsman could delineate it on
paper. The masses of horizontal limestones and sandstones, displaying
their fretted edges and lines of bedding, advance from the eastward in
the face of the wall until they reach the vertical fault plane. Then
they "break joints" and drop at once six or seven hundred feet, and
continue westward as before, but at a lower level. The whole topog-
raphy goes with it. Looking beyond to the upper Avail of the outer
chasm the "jog" where the break occurs is plainly seen. The whole
platform of the country .is dropped to the westward. The plain between
the upper palisades descends by a single step from east to west across
the fault by an amount equal to the displacement, and the inner gorge
and the whole chasm becomes by so much reduced in depth.

Excepting the dislocation itself, the faulting does not appear to have
been accompanied by any injury to the strata. Not a trace of shat-
tering, crumbling, or mashing of the beds is discernible. All looks as
clean and sharp as if it had been cut with a thin saw and the smooth

V. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

ANNUAL REPORT MSI. 1'L. XXV.

■ ; "-./..

- -.

■

■

J? ft • \ :' - *•>>

^fjOTC 3D

LOOKING UP THE TOROWEAP VALLEY. LAVA CASCADES.

118 GRAM) CANON DISTRICT.

faces pressed neatly together. But the only attainable view of it is
from the distance of a mile. Yet miles here are less than furlongs in
other countries, and all details as well as broader features are upon the
Brobdingnagian scale. What a nearer view might disclose is of course
impossible to conjecture. The plane of the fault is about vertical, though
there seems to be a slight inclination to the east, which maybe apparent
only and a result of perspective.

After a careful study of the surroundings of the fault, it becomes
apparent that it is of recent occurrence in comparison with other events
which have been in progress here. The tenor of all evidence bearing
upon the subject goes to show that these faults were not suddenly pro'
duced by violent convulsions, but gradually developed through long
stretches of time, and inch by inch or foot by foot. The Toroweap fault
gives no evidence of being exceptional in this respect. Its recency is
disclosed by many facts. It is seen that the amount of erosion in the
face of the transverse "cliff of displacement" produced by the faulting
is very small. This cliff has not receded from the fault plane to any con*
siderable extent. Yet the giant palisades which wall the outer chasm
have receded from the median line of the canon more than two miles since
the corrasion of the river laid bare the edges of their strata. It seems
very plain that the outer chasm had been formed and attained very
nearly its present condition before the fault started. But there is still
more conclusive evidence of recency. At the foot of the southern pali-
sade and at the jaws of the lateral valley are several basaltic craters.
They look like mere bee-hives under the eaves of such an escarpment,'
though in truth they are four or live hundred feet high. From their
vents streams of basalt are seen flowing down into the lateral valley
across the fault plane, and clear to the brink of the inner abyss. The
fault shears the lava Hoods as neatly as it does the Bed Wall limestone.*
Many other facts might be cited to the same purport, but this one is
so conclusive that nothing further is necessary. We shall find similar
evidences of recency when we come to the study of the great Hurricane
fault.

Another subject which will awaken the enthusiasm of the geologist
who visits this unique spot is the volcanic phonomena, Turning to*the
northwestward he beholds the heights of the Uinkaret. Upon its broad
expanse stand many basaltic craters in perfect preservation. We know
of about a hundred and fifty distinct cones in this plateau, included in
the space which lies between the Grand Cafion and a limit fori v miles
north of it. But it is in the vicinity of the chasm that they cluster most
thickly together and present the largest proportions. This part of the
Uinkaret is thickly covered with basalt, above which rises the tumultu-

* It seemed to me, so far as could bo judged from a distance, that a part of the fault-
ing had been accomplished before the lava outflowed. The main fact, however, is clear
that most of the faulting took place after the eruption, and of course settles the question
ot relative ago or recency.

uurro.s-.] AGE OF THE CHASM. 119

ous throng of craters. Very many wide and deep floods of basalt have
poured over the edge of the plateau into the lower Toroweap Valley
and upon the great esplanade of the canon, 1,500 to 1,800 feet below,
and, spreading out into wide fields, have reached the brink of the inner
gorge. Pouring over its brink, the fiery cascades have shot down into
the abyss and pursued their way many miles along the bed of the river.
At one epoch they had built up the bed of the Colorado about 400 feet,
but the river has scoured out its channel again and swept them all
away, regaining its old level, and is now cutting the sandstones below.
The spectacle of the lava floods descending from the Uinkaret, as seen
from Vulcan's Throne, is most imposing. It tells the story so plainly
that a child could read and understand it. Compared with many classic
volcanic regions the volcanism of the Uinkaret is a small affair. In
those classic regions the mind does not come into direct contact with
the enormity of the facts by a single glance of the eye. But here, if
kind Asmodeus were to lift the basaltic roof of the plateau, we should
see no more than we do now. The boldness of the picture is much in-
creased by the pediments of Carboniferous strata projecting from the
body of the plateau, showing the brilliant colors of the strata and their
sharply-defined architecture, with the dark masses of basalt wrapping
around them. Hard by, and almost within hail, is a superb gable pro-
jecting between two broad floods of lava, and so beautifully proportioned
and richly colored that we cannot help wishing to transport it by magic
to some more habitable region.

The Toroweap Valley has a significance to the geologist which might,
not be at once apparent to the tourist. Even the geologist would be
slow to discern it unless familiar with cognate facts displayed in the
country at large bordering the Grand Canon. In the effort to interpret
its meaning it becomes necessary to take a hasty view of one or two broad
facts relating to the lateral drainage of the chasm. Upon the north side,
in all the distance between the head of the Marble and the foot of the
Grand Canons, there is but one side caiion carrying drainage from dis-
tant regions. This single exception is Kanab Canon. In this respect the
Colorado is much like the lower courses of the 2sile ; and the cause is
plainly the same. The region is too arid to sustain any living streams or
even to keep open the conduits which in former periods might have sus-
tained them. Yet upon the assumption that at some former period the
climate was much more humid all analogy compels us to believe that
the Colorado once received many tributaries which are now extinct, and
upon examination we find good evidence that this was really the case.
The Toroweap Valley is the modified channel of an ancient river. On
the west side of the Uinkaret is another. A third is seen upon the
south side of the Colorado, directly opposite the Toroweap ; and a few
others may be easily designated. It appears that all these rivers dried
up before the inner gorge was excavated. For if they had continued to
carry water we may be sure that they would have cut their chasms as

120 GttAND CANON DISTRICT.

deep as the Grand Canon itself— just as the Little Colorado, Kanab
Creek, and Cataract Creek have done. For we have only to look at the
great multitude of lateral chasms of the upper courses of the Colorado
and of its forks, the Grand and Green, to he deeply impressed with the
fact that so long as a tributary river carries, we will not say a living
stream, but even occasional floods, its channel will be scoured down to
the same level as the trunk river itself. It is apparent, then, that the
Toroweap dried up before the cutting of the inner gorge of the Grand
Canon began, and hence we infer that the arid climate which caused it
to dry up existed before the beginning of the inner gorge.

By the application of other homologous facts, and by the same method
of reasoning, we infer that the outer chasm has also been excavated dur-
ing the prevalence of an arid climate. The platform of country adjoin-
ing the canon is at present devoid of lateral chasms, yet traces are
often found of ancient channels which became dry at about the time the
excavation of the outer canon began, or very soon thereafter. They are
cut to comparatively slight depths— from one hundred to three or four
hundred feet. That they are not of recent origin is proved by the fact
that they often have slopes away from the river, though it is clear that
they formerly sloped towards it. In truth, the entire chasm betrays
everywhere the continued action of an arid climate through the entire
period of its formation. This arid period is limited, approximately, to
Pliocene and Quaternary time. The general tenor of the facts is to the
effect that the Miocene was a humid period and the Pliocene a dry one
throughout the greater part of the West. This is one of the reasons
which lead us to the very probable conclusion that the age of the Grand
Canon is not older than the beginning of Pliocene time. We might also
draw a similar inference from a consideration of the enormous erosion
which took place here before the excavation of the chasm was begun.
The denudation of the Mesozoic system was an incomparably greater
work, and yet that denudation could not have begun until the last
strata (the Lower Eocene) were deposited. If these inferences are welj
founded, we may assign the greater part of Eocene and the whole of
Miocene time for the principal denudation of the Mesozoic, and the Plio-
cene and Quaternary for the excavation of the entire canon. The pro-
portion thus suggested between the portions of the work done and the
divisions of time required to accomplish them seems very fair and rea-
sonable. But the strongest evidence of all it would be almost impos-
sible to recite here in detail. In general terms, it may be characterized
as that internal evidence which appears when a vast array of facts, at
first disjointed and without obvious relation, are subsequently grouped
aright into a coherent system. Each constituent fact is then seen to
admit of one intelligible interpretation and no other; and each sub-
sidiary proposition ha« an overwhelming justification and an evidence
of verity far stronger than any which could be summoned if we en-
deavored to prove it independently.

DCTTOX.l

AGE OF THE CHASM. 121

Another question which the geologist asks here is, how happens it that
the outer chasm is so broad while the inner one is so narrow? The
outer chasm is five to six miles wide and 2,000 feet deep; the inner is
about 3,500 feet wide and 3,000 feet deep. The disparity is great. We
have seen enough to say at once that the widening of the outer chasm
was effected by the recession of its cliffs. If the corrasion of the canon
went steadily onward without a halt or respite this disparity demands
some explanation. Although we should expect less recession in the cliffs
of the inner gorge than in those of the outer, we should not expect it to
be so much less if the only variable concerned was length of time. We
might explain it by assuming the rocks of the inner gorge to be much
more obdurate than those above. This is true in part, but still the dif-
ference in this respect is insufficient. A much more satisfactory ex-
planation is found in the supposition that the broad esplanade of the
canon between the upper palisades was an ancient base-level of erosion
(page 101). We might imagine that when the Colorado had cut its
channel down to that level, it had reached the limiting depth of corrasion
for the time being. Then for a long period the palisades on either side
wasted and receded from the river. At last another epoch of upheaval
set in; the entire platform of the district was lifted several thousand
feet; the power of the river to corrade was restored; and with compar-
ative rapidity it sank the inner gorge. This becomes more than a mere
guess when we take account of its relation to the general category of
facts. Thus the great faults attest the fact that such an upheaval did
occur; that it occurred, too, just at the time supposed; and that in
amount it was quite equal and probably not more than equal to the
amount required. Other evidences might also be produced, but they are
too intricate to be discussed here.*

We leave the Toroweap Valley and the Grand Canon, regretting that
all its wonderful and instructive subjects should receive such brief notice.
Retracing our steps up the Toroweap for a distance of about six miles,
we at length select one of the great lava streams on the western side.
Although quite steep, we may ascend it with the animals and packs
without serious difficulty. At the end of an arduous climb upon the
ragged slope, we find ourselves upon the platform of the Uinkaret.
Around us are the old cinder-cones, most of which are of considerable
dimensions. All of them have given vent to Hoods of basalt, which have

M would, if spac7admitteilj>^
inthe wall of the inner gorge directly across from VnlcanVI'hrone. Upon the very brink
stands the remnant of an old crater (cinder-cone) whicli has been partially under-
mined and destroyed by the sapping of the wall-face. A lateral gorge sets back into
the esplanade from the river to a distance of a mile or more. In the wall-faces are dis-
posed tluMlikes through which the lava came up. Their "strike" is parallel to the course
Of the river, and perpendicular to the course of the Toroweap fault. Two of them
protrude from the face of the wall aboutGOOto l,400feet below the summit ; others pro-
trude just at the brink. It is extraordinary that none are seen in the depths of the
gorge. All of the attendant circumstances are surprising and curious, and yet it has
frequently been noted that basalts habitually seek improbable places to erupt.

122 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

spread out thinly over extensive surfaces, but as the number of super-
posed sheets is considerable in this part of the plateau, the aggregate
thickness, though somewhat roughly inferred, must be three or four
hundred feet, and occasionally much more. There is not much to add to
this description. The lava is apparently all of one kind, but some of
it much older than other portions. In truth, it soon becomes apparent
that the period of volcanic activity was a long one. A few miles from
the point where we attained the summit of the plateau and in a north-
west direction from it, we come upon the termination of a lava stream
which has the appearance of being extremely recent. It looks as fresh
as the emanations from Vesuvius or^Etna which have outflowed within
the last fifty years. Its surface is intensely black, and only here and
there can we perceive that weathering has even impaired its freshness.
Two miles away is seen the cone from which it emanated. The last
eruptions from it have almost destroyed it, and melted down the greater
part of its mass.

Skirting the edge of this lava-sheet, we find at the eastern base of
Mount Logan a small spring, named the Oak Spring. It is a central
point, from which the southern part of the plateau may be visited.
There is another very small spring high up on the southwestern side of
Mount Trumbull, and its waters have been brought down by a wooden
pipe to the plain below, to supply the wants of a saw-mill. A third and
much larger spring is found on the western side of the Uiukaret. These
are the only available sources of supply, and each may be used as occa-
sion requires for the examination of different parts of the plateau.

It will be necessary here to advert, with the greatest brevity, to the
facts which the Uinkaret presents. Its most conspicuous subject is its
volcanism. Almost as striking a subject is the great Hurricane fault,
which forms the western boundary of the plateau. It also presents
many other features of interest, but only the briefest allusion to them
can be made here.

The lavas of the Uinkaret are all basaltic, and are quite typical of
their class. They appear to vary but little in their constitution, and,
so far as the cursory examination hitherto made indicates, the only differ-
ences are such as are incident to varying conditions under which they
solidified after eruption, or to subsequent weathering. But it also
appears that the period of volcanic activity has covered a considerable
duration of geological time. There are old lavas and young lavas ; per-
haps we may say there are middle-aged lavas. The older lavas are
presented in the largest masses, the largest individual coulees. Another
noteworthy feature is that the oldest lavas are now found upon the
summits of the loftiest portions of the plateau, while the younger lavas
are found chiefly on the lower levels. It is well worth studying to see
how this comes about. The facts and explanation are best presented in
the fine mass of Mount Trumbull.
This mountain is in reality a gigantic butte ; that is to say, a mass of

urioN.] BASALTS OF THE UINKARKT. 123

sensibly horizontal strata left by the denudation of the same beds from
the platform surrounding. It is roofed over with a ponderous lava-cap,
500 to 800 feet thick. Under this lava-cap arc seen in numerous places
the horizontal edges of the strata, though the flanks of the mountain
are so thickly covered with the debris formed by the disintegration of
the basalts at the summit that these strata are for the most part buried.
The beds beneath the lava are of Permian age, and it is evident, that
nearly the whole and possibly quite all of the Permian series remains
in the mountain mass. That these basalts are very old is evident at a
glance. The evidences of erosion are seen on every hand, and their
aspect is strikingly different from that of the younger or middle aged
basalts. On the summit of the mountain we find a cluster of old vents,
from which a great part at least of these lavas were expelled. They are
simply large craters torn down, dissolved and rotted away to their very
roots by the ravage of time. It is evident, too, that the lava -cap itself is
as a whole a mere remnant of a mass of superposed sheets which once
extended much beyond the steep ledge which now limits them all around
the mountain. The geologist draws his conclusion very quickly. These
basalts in the lava-cap were extravasated at a time when the aspect of
the surrounding country was very different from that which is now pre-
sented. At that time large bodies of Permian strata, since swept away
extended continuously from the edges now exposed in the mountain
ilanks over spaces far away from it. AVe cannot indeed affirm that the
great denudation had not already begun its havoc in the Permian,
but we may be sure that it had not reached nearly its present stage.
Mount Trumbull then is a remnant of a platform of lava-capped Permian
beds, which was once of much greater extent. What was the extent
of this platform at the time of the eruptions, we do not yet know, nor
are we likely to know.

Around the base of the mountain on all sides the moie recent craters
are thickly clustered. The cones are for the most part in an admirable
state of preservation ; though here and there one may be found which
has suffered considerable ravage. About two miles north of the base of
Trumbull, especially, is an old cone, which has been laid open in such a
manner as to disclose its interior structure very clearly. It is in all
respects similar to the cones of the Mediterranean islands and countries.
All of these craters were built at a much later period than the lava-cap
of the mountain.

Mount Logan which lies near Trumbull to the southwestward, pre-
sents a similar state of affairs. It is a tabular mass capped with the
more ancient basalts and with a great body of Permian beds beneath.
South of Logan is another mass of ancient basalts, overlying Permian
strata. Upon this southern table, however, are planted some well
preserved craters which belong to the middle age of eruptions. Chief
among these is Mount Emma, whose summit has been used as a pri-
mary topographical station. In general, these more ancient basalts

V. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

ANNUAL REPORT 1881. PL. Will.

<«?»•"'

•2^

i».

21* V. *

-

> .

'— -x

»■'- ..

. C - £ '

— * — ' "* <*«_ A

d j»i: ;

ig

A
1

-4';

ST"

N

LOOKIXG NORTHEAST FROM MOUNT EMMA. MOUNTS LOGAN AND TRUMBULL IN THE DISTANCE.

,>UTrox J THE HURRICANE FAULT, ]25

descend the Queantoweap a few miles, and taming about we sec the effects

of the fault so plainly that a ehild eould hardly mistake them. Right in
the bottom of the valley is the lower braneh with a displacement of about
1 ,300 feet. (Plate XXVIII). On the cliff to the right is a second smaller
displacement of about 350 feet. Still farther to the right is a third of
about 700 feet. Beyond the limits of the diagram is a fourth of about
500 feet. Twenty-five miles north of the Colorado the branches have
disappeared and a single fault remains, with a shear of about 1,800 feet,
and this amount continues nearly constant to the northward for a few
miles. At length the fault rapidly increases. Seventy-five miles north of
the river, and at the point where the Virgen River crosses it, the throw has
become colossal. We stand upon the brink of the cliff with our feet upon
the summit of the Carboniferous, and within musket range, 1,500 feet
below, is the Jurassic white sandstone. Most of the Jurassic (S00 feel ),
the whole of the Trias, which here has unusual thickness (2,800 or 2,900
feet), and the whole of the Permian and Permo-Carboniferous (1,200 or
1,300 feet), overlie the continuation of the strata on which we stand.
The total throw is not far from 0,500 feet. Still northward extends the
fault, and still it rapidly increases. At length it reaches a maximum
displacement of more than 12,000 feet on the west side of the Markagunt.
Continuing northward it gradually decreases, and finally disappears near
the western flank of the Tushar Mountains. The entire length of this
fault is more than 200 miles. It is throughout its whole extent a primary
geological and topographical feature of the region it traverses.

^Vitli regard to the age of the fault we have some information. It is
not probable that all its portions were sheared simultaneously, and it is
quite certain that its development was very slow and gradual and pro-
gressed through a long stretch of geological time. Confining our atten-
tion to that portion extending along the western flank of the Uinkaret,
we find that nearly the whole displacement took place after t lie eruption
of the oldest basalts, for the fault dislocates the most ancient lava beds.
Whether some small portion of it may or may not have existed before
these eruptions we cannot positively say, but no evidence of such priority
has been noted. On the other hand, all the younger lavas, and some, at
least, of the middle-aged lavas flowed across the fault and have not since
been cut by it. But some of the middle-aged lavas appear to have suf-
fered some dislocation. Hence we infer (1), That the age of this part of
the Hurricane fault is not older than the beginning of the Pliocene. (2),
That the displacement went on in harmony and conjunction with the vol-
canic; activity. (3), That for a long period, historically speaking, it has
been quiescent, and no movement has within the historic epoch taken
place. (4), That the beginning of the Hurricane fault is older than the
beginning of the Toroweap fault. These conclusions are of great impor-
tance in unraveling the history of the Grand Canon district, for they at
once become links in a chain of reasoning which, though complex, is
very systematic and self-consistent. The faults are evidences of vertical

U. S. UtuLUUlCAl. .SCAT/.).

ANNUAL REPORT 188L PL. XXVIII.

1
■ ■ . .

■

THE HURRICANE FAULT— IN THE QUEANTOWEAP VALLEV

CHAPTER VI.

THE KAIBAB.

The Kaibab is the loftiest of the four plateaus through which the
the Grand Canon extends. It is from 1,500 to 2,000 feet higher than
the Kanab Plateau on the west, and from 2,500 to 4,000 feet higher than
the Marble Canon platform on the east. Its superior altitude is due
wholly to displacement and not to erosion, for the strata upon its sum-
mit are the same as those upon the surfaces of the others. The up-
heaval has produced a sharp fault upon the western flank and a great
monoclinal flexure upon its eastern flauk. Throughout its entire plat-
form the upper Carboniferous forms the surface. The Kaibab begins at
the base of the Vermilion Cliffs near the little village of Paria; its
northern extremity terminating in a slender cusp. Steadily widening
and increasing very slowly in altitude, it reaches southward nearly a hun-
dred miles to the Colorado River, where it attains a breadth of about
35 miles. Its highest point is about 9,280 feet above the sea, but most
of its surface is between the altitudes of 7,800 and 0,000 feet.

When viewed from a distance its summit, projected against the sky,
looks remarkably smooth and level. The slow increase of altitude from
north to south may be discerned, and yet, in the absence of positive
knowledge, it would be doubted by the careful observer whether this
might not be due to perspective, and not real. When we actually visit
the plateau we find the summit, seeming so smooth when viewed from
afar, to be really very rugged. It is scored with a minutely ramified
system of ravines, varying much in depth, but averaging about 300
feet in the heart of the plateau, and much deeper at the flanks. The
whole summit is magnificently forest-clad. In this respect it is in
strong contrast to the other plateaus, excepting, however, in a much infe-
rior way, the higher parts of the Uinkaret. The other plateaus are for-
midable deserts; the Kaibab is a paradise. The forests are due to the
superior altitude of the plateau, for the higher the altitude the moister
the climate. Through the southern portion of the Kaibab is cut the
finest portion of the Grand Canon. Vast and imposing as is the
scenery at the foot of the Toroweap, the scenery of the Kaibab is much
more impressive. I propose in the present chapter to describe in famil-
iar language a journey from Kanab to the Kaibab, and to the brink of
the chasm, where we may contemplate its sublimity. Its geological
significance must be discussed in a future work.

When the order is given to the party encamped at the little village of
Kanab to prepare for the Kaibab, it is obeyed with more than ordinary

127

128

GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

alacrity. From the chief of the party down to the herders and cooks all
look forward to delightful wanderings in a cooler atmosphere, in open
forests of noble pines and spruces, in flowery parks and winding ave-
nues oi rich verdure; to scenery the grandest of earth, and to commu-
nion with Nature in her noblest and loveliest moods. As we descend

the village street and take a well-known by-path upon its outskirts, even
the poor animals know whither they arc going; they have traveled this
trail before and remember the long, green bunch-grass and tufted " gram-
ma," the lupine and wild oats. They trot along with nimble steps,
requiring neither spur to urge nor rein to guide them. Before us is the
Permian terrace rising by the gentlest of slopes ; through it the Kanab
River has cut a wide shallow gap in which stand several pretty little
buttes carved sumptuously in the characteristic style of the formation.
Beyond it the Carboniferous platform extends southward without visi-

r. S. hEOLCMlLAL SURVEY.

ANNUAL REPORT 1881. PL WIS.

KAN AH CANON.

130 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

dry. I have known the temperature of the air to be 110° at midday, fall
ing to 51° at midnight, without any general atmospheric disturbance or
change except that which is due to nocturnal radiation. Upon the open
desert the air is almost always still both by day and night. Rarely do
the high winds blow over it in summer, and even strong breezes are an
common except in the vicinity of great cliffs. At night the stillness is
profound, and unless there is water or green vegetation hard by even the
chirping of insects is unheard. The only sound which breaks upon the
ear is the howling of the wolves that prowl about the camp and follow
the tracks of the animals.

The hours roll quickly past as we move onward in the darkness. At
length when the stars betoken the approach of midnight we halt, strip
off the packs and saddles, hobble the animals and turn them loose to
browse upon the scanty herbage. As the sun rises we are once more on
the road. For ten miles from Kanab the trail descends by a hardly
perceptible grade. Thence it ascends gradually at a rate of about 150
feet to the mile. From the fifteenth to the twenty-third mile it lies
in shallow ravines but at last emerges upon more open ground. As we
look back towards the north one of the grand spectacles of the Plateau
country is disclosed to us. It is a view of the great cliffs which bound
the southern terraces of the High Plateaus rising one above another.
Nearly 10,000 feet of strata are exposed edgewise and occupy a line of
frontage from 50 to GO miles in length. It includes the stratigraphic
series from the base of the Permian to the summit of the Lower Eocene.
The view of the terraces from the north, from the brink of the Marka-
gunt or Paunsagunt, is of a very different character from this. There
we see only their sloping summits with now and then a fragment of a
mural front swung into view obliquely by the meandering course of the
line of escarpment. Here the general line of frontage faces us while t he
terrace platforms are invisible. The view is a distant one but it requires-
great distance to bring into the field of vision an exposure so vast. At
their nearest points the Permian is 15 miles away, the Trias 20, the Jura
35, and the Eocene more than 50. It should be observed that we are
looking across the broad depression or concavity before spoken of, and
that there is a gentle slope downwards for 15 miles to the base of the
Permian, which lies 1,900 feet below us. Notwithstanding the distance
there is no difficulty in distinguishing the different formations, and there
would have been none even if we had never before seen the terraces, pro-
vided wo had become familiar with their several aspects elsewhere; so
strongly individualized are their colors and their sculptural forms. The
Cretaceous alone is obscure, for in the portions of the terraces now in
sight it does not form cliffs but breaks down in long slopes covered with
soil and debris. If we were a few miles further west the Cretaceous
cliffs of the Paria amphitheater would be visible and be as easily deter-
mined as the others, but here the Kaibab hides them. Although nearly
10,000 feet of strata are disclosed the summit of the Eocene lies only

button] FROM KANAB TO THE KAIBAB. 131

5,000 to 5,500 feet above the base of the Permian, for in the interval
between the two exposures the northward dip of the whole mass has
earned down the Eocene about 5,000 feet.

From every elevated point on the Kanab Plateau this magnificent
display is in full view. All of the broader geological facts in the strat-
igraphy and structure of the terraces may be distinctly seen and inter
preted. The increment in thickness of the Mesozoie strata towards the
west is very plain. The effect of the great Sevier fault, which comes
down from the High Plateaus cutting across the terrace platforms and
disappearing at the Pipe Spring promontory of the Vermilion ('litis is
now visible. By a simple reconstruction, lifting up the thrown side of
this fault and gradually depressing the westward extension of the strata
until the Eocene is horizontal, we can restore mentally the whole mass
to the attitude it held in Eocene time, and it will require but a slight
effort of the imagination to detect the original configuration which de-
termined the present positions of the drainage basins of the Virgen, Ka-
nab, and Paria Rivers. With a measured base-line extending east and
west upon this part of the Kanab Plateau and with a fine large theodo-
lite it would be practicable to make all the measurements necessary for
determining the masses and positions of the several stratigraphic mem-
bers with a degree of accuracy not materially less than could be obtained
by studying them upon their own ground.

A spectacle of this kind is most impressive to the geologist. It brings
into one view the coordinated results of observations made laboriously
by months of travel and inspection in a very broad and rugged held. The
great distances through which the eye can reach, the aspect of cliffs
towering above and beyond cliffs, the great cumulative altitude thus
attained, the immensity of the masses revealed, the boldness of form,
the distinctness of the lines of stratification, and especially the brilliant
coloring, subdued indeed, but also refined by the haze, give to the scene
a grandeur which has few parallels.

But we turn our backs upon it, and pursue our way, pausing anon to
look at it with a reverent enthusiasm. The daylight discloses the west-
ern Kaibab wall upon our left, only five or six miles distant, and our
course changes from southeast to south parallel to its front. Already
we feel the influences of its long spurs sweeping outward and dying
away in the desert platform, and the trail becomes more hilly. Once
or twice it takes us down into ravines which are the continuations of
the great chasms which cut it to its base and recede far into its mass,
winding out of sight in profound depths. Vegetation has made its
appearance all around us, not abundantly, indeed, but sufficiently to
contrast with the desolation behind us. Upon the crest of the plateau
we can see the giant pines and spruces, and we covet their luxurious
shade. Nearer, on either hand, arc pinons and cedars, mountain mahog-
any and mesquite, with many low forms of desert shrubbery. Many
species of cactus are seen, the most abundant of which are the opuntias,

132 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

or prickly pears. Of these there are four or five very common species.
A large cactus "orchard n in blossom is a very beautiful sight, display-
ing flowers which, for beauty of form and richness of color, are seldom
surpassed by the choicer gems of the conservatory. Nor is it less
attractive when in the fruit, for it yields a multitude of purple "pears,"
which are very juicy and refreshing, and by no means contemptible in
flavor. There is another form of cactus not likely to be forgotten by
anybody who has once seen it, and which is very common on the Kami!)
desert. It is a stout bush, with many branches, growing from 3 to C
feet high. The trunk and branches have a hard, woody core, and are
thickly fringed with rows of strong, sharp spines which present a very
ferocious aspect. Altogether it is the most truculent looking member
of the vegetable kingdom I happen to be acquainted with. Very com-
mon, too, are the yuccas, or " Spanish bayonets," which resemble, on a
small scale, the noted agave or century plant. Another common species,
somewhat resembling the last, bears a cluster of melon-like seed cases
of the size and form of cucumbers, which the Indians gather and dry for
food.*

At length the trail leads down into "Stewart's Canon," a rather broad
cafion valley descending towards us from the south. Just where we
enter it it turns sharply to the west forming an elbow, and, sinking thence
ever deeper into the earth through a course of fifteen miles, it opens at
last into the heart of Kanab Cafion at a depth of nearly 3,500 feet.
Here at the elbow it is comparatively shallow. Before reaching the
elbow it runs northward close to the base of the Kaibab wall, which
rises more than 1,200 feet above its floor, while the opposite or western
side is only about 400 feet high. The difference in the altitudes of
the two sides is accounted for by the presence of the West Kaibab fault,
which runs at the foot of the wall throwing down the western side
more than 800 feet. The geological relations here are worthy of some
study. The presence of the fault is detected in a moment. Upon the
western side the familiar grey limestones of the Upper Aubrey series
form the entire wall. Upon the eastern side the same beds are seen
upon the summit more than 800 feet higher than on the western side.
Beneath them is the hard crossbedded sandstone, and still lower down
the brilliant red sandy shales of the Lower Aubrey. Here, too, is seen
that curious phenomenon so often presented in connection with the
faults of this region. As the thrown beds approach the fault-plane they
are turned doicn.

The trail leads southward up Stewart's Canon with an ascent that is
barely perceptible. We become conscious of increasing altitude indi-
rectly by the barometer and by the change in the vegetation. The
desert shrubs have mostly disappeared and given jdace to the scrub-
oaks and weeds which are the unfailing indications of a cooler and

* The Mormons find a singular use for this plant. The pounded root, macerated in
water, yields a thick liquid which makes a very good substitute Cor soap.

IH'TTOX.]

FROM KAXAB TO THE KAIBAB.

133

Fig. 13.— A fault with the beds flexed downward on the sunken sido

moister climate. But the most welcome sight is the close proximity
of the yellow pines which stand upon the summit above and even upon
the lower platform which looks down from the western side. As yet
they do not grow in the valley bottom. We have not quite reached the
Kaibab, though it is close at hand— nay, we pass right by its open gates
which seem to invite us in with a welcome; for at intervals of a mile or
two we perceive upon the left the openings of grand ravines leading up
to its platform and the moment we enter any one of tbem we arc within
the precincts of the great plateau. Stewart's Canon is the trunk valley
which receives the drainage of a considerable section of the western side
of the Kaibab. The large affluents all come from the east, and none of
any importance from the west.

About five miles from the point where the trail enters the valley we
reach the first water — a tiny stream coming down from one of the great
ravines and sinking into the soil a few hundred yards beyond the mouth.
Halting long enough to allow the animals to drink we move onward
about two miles further up the valley and make camp. Here there comes
out of the Kaibab wall, about 300 feet above us, a stream of water as
large as a man's body, which cascades down the rocks into a pool cov-
ering half an acre. There is a phenomenon here worth noticing, for it
is a prelude to some very singular facts of general prevalence throughout
this wonderful plateau. Across the outlet of the pool a rude dam Ixas
been constructed of stones and mud, which may be easily torn open or
replaced. When the dam is open a large stream equal to the influx
pours out of it, but the whole outpour sinks within a quarter of a mile.
When the dam is closed the water in the pool rises about 15 inches and
there is no outflow. All the water which enters the pool then sinks
along the newly submerged margin. A stream of that size anywhere
else in the Plateau country would ordinarily run eight or ten miles, and
in a moist country would run much further. The sudden sinking of

134 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

streams is by DO moans rare, but is generally exceptional. On the Kaibab
it is the rule. Upon all its broad expanse there is nothing which can
be properly called a brook or a living stream. About a dozen springs
arc known, but their waters in every instance sink in the earth within a
few hundred yards of their sources. And the "Big Spring" in Stewart's
CaTion yields several times as much water as all the others put togother.
With this foreknowledge the prospects of water supply upon the Kaibab
might seem discharging; but we shall not suffer for the want of it.

Although the sun is still high when the Big Spring is reached nothing
will be gained by prolonging the day's inarch, and it is well to take a look
at the surroundings. In some way, without knowing exactly when and
where, we seem to have gotten into the Kaibab; for around us is the
sylvan scenery and a rolling country traversed by many valleys and
ravines. True they are not the finest types, but when we recall the
desert we have just left this place looks like a paradise. The barometer
shows' a considerable altitude, 7,850 feet, and the air though warm is not
oppressive. As we approached the plateau from the desert and saw its
battlements towering grandly in the distance and becoming hourly more
grand, its level parapet retreating into indefinite distance in either direc-
tion, it never occured to us that we might be spared the arduous strug-
gle of scaling the wall, or, as a still more arduous alternative, the forcing
of a rough passage through some narrow ravine for many miles. Yet
we have reached this spot by a route as easy as an old-fashioned turn-
pike. In truth, the configuration of the southern part of the Kaibab
could not be discerned as we approached it from the north. But putting
together the observations of the journey it now becomes apparent that
the surface of the Kanab Plateau rises quite rapidly towards the south,
while the Kaibab gains in altitude much more slowly. Opposite our
last camp the difference in the altitudes of the two plateaus is about
2,300 feet. Here it has greatly diminished, and the passage from one to
the other is new partly by a very gentle inclined plane and partly by a
fault. Fifteen miles further south the fault vanishes or becomes insig-
nificant, and the passage is by a long slope.*

Resuming in the morning the route up Stewart's Cafion, a half-hour's
ride brings us to an abandoned saw-mill. Here the trail leaves the val-
ley which we have followed for ten miles and turns up into a large ravine
coming from the east or southeast, It is much narrower than Stewart's
Canon, with very abrupt and almost precipitous walls about 000 feet

*It may bo remarked here that every fault in the district is accompanied with a
corresponding break in the topography. A cliff or steep slope is produced by it, I do
not recall an instance where the lifted beds are planed off by erosion, so as to make
a continuous level with the thrown beds. The cliffs generated by displacement have
a character of their own which the experienced observer distinguishes quickly and
confidently from cliffs of erosion. These characteristic breaks iu the topography often
betray a fault in localities where it would otherwise have been passed over unnoticed
and unsuspected.

dutton] RAVINES OF THE KAIBAB. 135

high. The traveler in the Plateau province learns to dread the neces-
sity which compels him to thread a deep gorge or canon unless lie knows
beforehand that there is a practicable and easy trail through it. If it
is dry it is almost certain to be obstructed by fallen fragments and thickly
set with scrub, its bottom scoured into rough gullies by the sudden floods;
and half the time it will be necessary to mount the steep talus and thread
it. If it carries a living stream the way is still worse, for in addition to
the foregoing difficulties there are dangerous quicksands, impenetrable
thickets of willows and thorny bushes, and the stream meanders from
wall to wall. Unless there is a good trail the traveler will usually prefer
to mount the cliff if a break can be found in it and seek the mesa above,
and thus by a single struggle get rid of the miseries below. Not so the
ravines of the Kaibab. Like the paths trodden by the pilgrims in the
Delectable Mountains, "their ways are pleasantness and all their paths
are peace." The ravine we enter is but a fair specimen of a vast number of
them which cover the whole broad surface of the plateau with an infinite
network of ramifications. Its bottom is covered with a carpet of grass
and flowers growing rankly in a smooth firm soil free from rocks and
undergrowth. Here and there a clump of aspens or noble pines grow
in the way, but offer no obstacles to progress. It is like riding through
a well-kept park or an avenue shaded by ancient trees. And now the
effect of the absence of streams becomes manifest. Not only are there
no perennial brooks, but there are no indications that even in the time
of heavy rains or of melting snow any notable amount of water ever
runs in these channels. Yet the Kaibab is a moist region. In summer
the rains are frequent, and in winter the snow lies deep. Horses cannot
winter there and the wild cattle and deer, late in October, abandon it
and seek the lower regions around its flanks. In all other plateaus or
mountain ranges of equal mass and altitude and with equal precipita-
tion there are many goodly streams and even large creeks fed through
out the summer by numberless copious springs; and when the snows
melt these streams become raging torrents. But so rare are the indica-
tions of running water on the Kaibab even in times of melting snow, or
of vernal rains, that whenever we find a "wash" we look at it witii
surprise as if it were a strange phenomenon demanding special ex-
planation. But the very absence of these traces of running water con-
stitutes one of the greatest charms of the Kaibab, for every ravine is
as smooth as a lawn and carpeted with a turf of mountain grass, richly
decked with flowers of rare beauty and luxuriance.

The great trees grow chiefly upon the main platform above us. Ex-
cept in the highest part of the plateau they are mostly the yellow pine
(Pimut ponrlcrosa), but large spruces are also common [Abies grandis,
A. Engdmanni). Upon the flanks of the ravines they also grow, the
piues upon the northern or sunny side, the spruces upon the opposite.
In the valley bottom they grow scatteringly, and for the most part leave

136 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

it quite open. Contrasting finely with these are the aspens (Popuhis
trcmuloides) with their white trunks and pale green foliage. Through-
out the greater part of the plateau these three genera comprise all the
arboreal forms that occur. But upon its borders we also find cedars,
mountain mahogany, and pinon (Junipcrus occidental is, Ccrcocarpii*
Icdifolius, and Pimm edulis), the latter, though classed as a pine, differ
ing greatly from the more typical forms of the genus.

The ravine, where we enter its mouth, is about COO feet in depth.
The ascent is by a very easy grade, averaging about 100 feet to the mile.
As we progress it becomes shallower, but not so rapidly as the grade
might indicate, for the plateau summit also rises though at a lower
grade towards the east. The course is a crooked one, but none the less
agreeable oti that account. Every traveler on foot or horseback has
probably observed how tiresome and monotonous the road becomes when
he can see it stretching away before him for many miles, and how
charming the diversity when it wanders hither and thither. It matters
not if the successive vistas are as much alike as two turns of a kaleido-
scope, there is always an impatience to see what is beyond the next turn.
So it is here. The successive scenes are much alike, or change by insen-
sible degrees, but the same general view is presented in ever varying
detail, and its subject matter is always delightful.

It is difficult to say precisely wherein the charm of the sylvan scenery
of the Kaibab consists. We, who through successive summers have
wandered through its forests and parks, have come to regard it as the
most enchanting region it has ever been our privilege to visit. Surely
there is no lack of beautiful or grand forest scenery in America, and it
is a matter of taste what species of trees are the most pleasing. Proba-
bly few people would select the conifers and poplars as the highest
types of arboreal beauty. I suspect that the charm consists in influ-
ences far more subtle than these outward forms. The delicious cli-
mate, neither cold nor hot, neither wet nor excessively dry, but always
exhilarating, is a fundamental condition by virtue of which the body
and mind are brought into the most susceptible mood. The ease with
which we move from place to place, the absence of all anxiety or care
for the three great requisites of camp life, fuel, water, and grass, are
accessory conditions. The contrast of the desert with its fatigue, its
numberless discomforts and privations, is still another. But the scenery
is also very beautiful in itself. The trees are large and noble in
aspect and stand widely apart, except in the highest parts of the pla-
teau where the spruces predominate. Instead of dense thickets where
we are shut in by impenetrable foliage, we can look far beyond and
see the tree trunks vanishing away like an infinite colonnade. The
ground is unobstructed and inviting. There is a constant succession of
parks and glades— dreamy avenues of grass and flowers winding be-
tween sylvan walls, or spreading out in broad open meadows. From

dutton] SYLVAN SCENERY. 137

June until September there is a display of wild flowers which is quite
beyond description. The valley sides and platforms above are resplen-
dent with dense masses of scarlet, white, purple, and yellow. It is note-
worthy that while the trees exhibit but few species, the humbler plants
present a very great number, both of species and genera. In the
upper regions of the nigh Plateaus, Mr. Lester F. Ward collected in a
single season more than GOO species of plants, and the Kaibab, though
offering a much smaller range of altitude and climate, would doubtless
yield as rich a flora in proportion to the diversity of its conditions.

At a distance of about eight miles from its mouth, the ravine we have
chosen has become very shallow, with gently sloping sides. At length
we leave it and ascend its right bank to the upper platform. The way
here is as pleasant as before, for it is beneath the pines standing
at intervals varying from 50 to 100 feet, and upon a soil that is smooth,
firm, and tree from undergrowth. All is open, and we may look far
into the depths of the forest on either hand. We now perceive that the
surface of the plateau undulates with rolling hills and gently de-
pressed vales. These valleys are the ramifications of the drainage chan-
nels. They are innumerable and cover the entire surface of the plateau.
The main channels all deepen as they approach the edges of the plateau
and often attain considerable depth, becoming at the same time precip-
itous. The deepest are those which emerge near the elbow of Stewart's
Canon and north of that point. These attain depths exceeding a thou-
sand feet. The ravines which descend towards the eastern flank of the
plateau terminate in a different manner. In the interior parts of the
plateau these drainage valleys are all shallow, rarely exceeding 300 or
400 feet in depth, and seldom abrupt.

After two or three miles upon the summit, the trail descends into
another valley, whose course we follow upward for about seven miles.
At the distance of about twenty miles from Stewart's Caiiou, we find
that we have gained about 1,200 feet of altitude, and that the vegetal ion
has changed its aspect somewhat. The pines, though still abundant, are
now in the minority, and the spruces and aspens greatly predominate.
The spruces form dense thickets on either hand, which nothing but the
direst necessity would ever induce us to enter. Of this genus there are
several species, varying much in habit. The great firs (Abies grandi.s, A.
Enyelmanni) are exceedingly beautiful on account of their sumptuous
foliage. But die most common species is a smaller one (A. siilxtlpuia).
with a tall and straight trunk, its branches spreading only five or six
feet. These trees cluster so thickly together that a passage through
them is extremely difficult and sometimes impossible. But we are not
constrained to attempt it, for they seldom grow in the valley bottoms.
Again we leave the ravine, and winding about among the hills, passing
from glade to glade, we at length find ourselves upon the summit of
a long slope, which descends rapidly into a great park, the largest on
the Kaibab. It has received the name of

U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

ANNUAL REPORT 1881. PL. XXX.

DEMOTTE PARK.

138 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

DE MOTTK PARK.

Its length is about ton miles, its average width about two miles. It is a
depressed area in the heart of the plateau and is on every side girt about
by more elevated ground rising by strong slopes ,'500 or 400 feet above
its floor. The borders and heights above are densely forest-clad, but
not a tree stands within the park itself. Descending into its basin and
proceeding southward about two and a half miles, we reach a little
spring where we make camp. The distance from the Big Spring to
Stewart's Canon is about 2G miles by trail.

De Motte Park is eminently adapted to be the base of operations
in a campaign of geological investigation upon the southern part of the
Kaibab. It is a central locality from which we may radiate in any di-
rection to the bounds of the plateau. Here the great bulk of the supplies
may be deposited, and from the supply camp we make journeys with
light packs for one, two, or three days, as it may suit our convenience,
and to it we may return to fit out for another short trip. The circum-
stances which make the park so advantageous in this respect are worth
reciting.

Notwithstanding the open character of the forest there are two diffi-
culties in the way of travel on the Kaibab. The first has already been
mentioned, scarcity of water. We know of about a dozen small springs,
some of them conveniently located for the purposes of the explorer,
others not. There is, however, another source of water supply which will
be described presently. The second difficulty is the danger of getting
lost and bewildered in the forest. This may seem to be a singular source
of danger for an explorer, who of all men is bound to know his exact
whereabouts at every step. But if he were to visit the Kaibab with that
easy confidence and without a guide he would probably learn a severe
lesson in less than a fortnight. The young Mormon herders who range
over this region, and who follow atrail with the keen instinctsof Indians,
and with more than an Indian's intelligence, dread the mazes of the for-
est until they come to know them. Even the Indians who live and hunt
there during the summer and autumn have sad tales about comrades lost
when the snows came early and buried the trails so that they could not
be followed. The bewildering character arises from the monotony of t he
scenery. There are hundreds of hills and gulches, but they all look
alike. There are no landmarks except trees, which arc worse than none
at all. If you enter a ravine for the second time at a point other than
that at which you first entered it you would probably fail to recognize it.
As with the faces of the Chinese, no conscientious white man would be
willing to swear that he had ever seen any particular one before. Yet
the riddle of the Kaibab is soon solved, and, once read, all danger is over.
If the traveler is lost there is an infallible clew. He must go at once to
De Motte Park. But how shall he find the way ? If he has reason to

DtrrroK.] DRAINAGE SYSTEM OF THE KAIBAB. 139

suppose that he is within a dozen miles of it he has only to enter a main
ravine and follow it to its head. This, however, does not apply to the
portions of the plateau which lie more than five miles north of the park.
The way may be long, but is easy and sure. A few ravines fade out
before reaching the near neighborhood of the park. In that event take
the nearest one on the right or left. All of them head upon the summit
which looks down into the park. It is necessary, however, to keep to
the main ravine and avoid its minor tributaries, and there is a criterion
by which it may be distinguished. At the confluence of a lateral ravine
the grade of the main ravine is always the less of the two.

Although this may seem to be nothing more than a trival bit of
woodcraft, it really illustrates an important fact— the drainage sys-
tem of a large portion of the Kaibab. The study of this drainage system
Mill shed some light upon the geological history not only of the plateau
itself, but of the region adjoining, and of the Grand Canon.

The thought which must be predominant in the mind of cue who for
the first time enters the Kaibab is of the Grand Canon. The fame of
its grandeur is world-wide, and the desire to see it as it is grows stronger
the nearer he approaches to it. This longing must be at least tempered
if not wholly satisfied before the mind is in the humor to contemplate
anything else. Our first expedition, then, shall be to the brink of the

great abyss.

As the sun is rising and before his beams have penetrated to the
bottom of the park we are on the way. On either hand is the forest,
covering the slopes and the heights above, but ending suddenly at the
foot of every incline. Before us to the southward stretches the open
field with hardly an undulation. Six or seven miles away we can see
the sylvan walls approach each other, leaving a narrow gateway be-
tween the tall spruces where the surface of the ground for a moment is
sharply projected against the sky. The scene is, on the whole, a very
attractive one. There is a great wealth of vegetation, somber indeed,
and monotonous, but the darkness of the tone is suggestive of depth
and richness of color. The only alleviating contrast is between the
smooth expanse of the park and the myriads of sharp spikes which
terminate the tree tops. The spirit of the scence is a calm, serene, and
gente one, touched with a tinge of solemnity and melancholy.

About a mile from camp we came upon an object worthy of attention.
It is rather a deep depression in the earth about 200 feet across and
very nearly circular. Within it is a large pool of water. Its depth
below the valley floor may be about 40 feet, and the depth of the water
r> or G feet in the middle. It is a fair specimen of a frequent occurrence
upon the Kaibab. I have never seen them elsewhere, and the explana-
tion is difficult. The interest lies in the mystery of their origin. In
every day's ride we usually find three or four of them and sometimes
more. Some of them contain water, but the majority do not. Some
hold water throughout the year, some only in the early summer or until

140 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

autumn. They vary in size and depth very considerably. Some are as
narrow as 20 feet ; some are ,300 to 400 feet across. The depths vary
from a yard or two to a hundred feet. The form is crater-like— always
approximately circular. They do not appear to occur under any special
set of conditions. They are found as often upon the platforms as in the
valleys and are not uncommon upon the slopes of the ravines. In a few
instances traces may be seen of rain gullies or washes leading into them
but not often, and none have ever been noted leading out of them!
Whatever running water may enter them sinks within their basins;
but it is certain that many of them rarely receive any running watei In
the cases of those which do the wonder is that they donot soon till up wit h
sand and silt, for the water generated by heavy rain storms or by melt.
ing snows, when sufficient in volume to run in a stream, is always thick
with mud. The scarcity of running water on the Kaibab has been men-
tioned. Yet the precipitation is comparatively great and the evapora-
tion small. It is apparent that all the water which falls upon its vast
expanse, with the exception of a slight percentage evaporated, must sink
into the earth, where it is doubtless gathered in subterranean drainage
channels which open in the profound depths of the great amphitheaters
of the Grand Canon. In those depths are large creeks of perennial
water issuing from the openings of those underground passages. This
implies a system of subterranean rivulets, but it is not more wonderful
than the endless caverns in the limestones of Kentucky and Indiana,
and it is probably not upon so large a scale nor so greatly ramified.
It also argues a high degree of permeability both in the upper strata and
in the overmanning soil. The water sifts through them as easily as
through sand, and rarely gathers into streams even in the most copious
showers or most rapid melting of the snow. Whether these « lagoons"
and "sink-holes," as we termed them, are the openings of pipes lead
ing down into the subterranean rivers and kept open by a gradual
solution of the limestone, it is difficult to say. There are some diffi-
Jultes in the way of this theory.

Moving rapidly southward, at length we reach the Svlvan Gate at the
lower end. Passing through we immediately find ourselves at the head
of a second park very similar to De Motte's, but smaller, having a length
of nearly three miles. It is named Little De Motte Park, and the Sylvan
Gate occupies a divide between the two. It contains a largo lagoon
holding stagnant water. There is a chain of these parks reaching from
the northern end of De Motte's southward, a distance of 25 miles, sepa-
rated only by necks of forest.

Our first objective point is a spring situated in one of the large ra-
vines which head in the heights overlooking these two parks. Without
some foreknowledge of the way to reach it, or without a guide, it would
be impassible to find it, and the same is true of any other spring on the
summit, but with this foreknowledge we seek the southwestern border
of Little De Motte and enter the timber. During half an hour there is

dutton.) APPROACHING THE BRINK. 141

a miserable struggle with fallen trees and thick set branches of spruce
and aspen, but at length the heights are gained, and we descend into a
shallow ravine where the way is once more open. The winding glade with
smooth bottom richly carpeted with long green grass, aglow with myr-
iads of beautiful blossoms is before us, and the tall trees are on either
hand. Soon it leads into a larger one, and this into another, until at last
the main ravine is reached. Very sweet and touching now are the influ-
ences of nature. The balmy air, the dark and somber spruces, the pale
green aspens, the golden shafts of sunlight shot through their foliage, the
velvet sward — surely this is the home of the woodland nymphs, and at
every turn of the way we can fancy we are about to see them Hying at
our approach, or peeping at us from the flowery banks.

By half-past ten the spring is reached. Next to the Big Spring, in
Stewart's Oafion, it is the largest on the summit of the plateau. Bere,
too, is the only semblance of running water, for the stream flows a little
more than half a mile before it sinks. The water is cold and delicious.
It has a faint whitish cast like that which would be produced by putting
a drop or two of milk into a bucket of pure water. I presume it is caused
by a fine precipitate of lime. We called it the "Milk Spring."
Pausing here for a hasty lunch, and to till the kegs (for to-night we may
make a " dry" camp), we push on. We climb out of the ravine, and in
fact we only came here to obtain water, as it is the only place near to
the point of destination at which water can be procured. The route
now becomes more rugged, leading across ravines and over intervening
ridges, crossing the grain of the country, so to speak. But it is not diffi-
cult, for the pines have taken place of the spruces, and where the pines
predominate the forestis very open. For eight miles from the Milk Spring
we continue to crossbills and valleys, then follow alow swale shaded by
giant pines with trunks three to four feet in thickness. The banks are a
parterre of flowers. On yonderhillside, beneath oneof these kingly trees,
is a spot which seems to glow with an unwonted wealth of floral beauty.
It is scarcely a hundred yards distant; let us pluck a bouquet from it.
We ride up the slope.

The earth suddenly sinks at our feet to illimitable depths. In an in-
stant, in the twinkling of an eye, the awful scene is before us.

CHAPTER VII.

POINT SUBLIME.

Wherever we reach the Grand Canon in the Kaibab it bursts upon
(he vision in a moment. Seldom is any warning given that we are near
the brink. At the Toroweap it is quite otherwise. There we are notified
that we are near it a day before we reach it. As the final march to that
portion of the chasm is made the scene gradually develops, growing by
insensible degrees more grand until at last we stand upon the brink of
the inner gorge, where all is before us. In the Kaibab the forest
reaches to the sharp edge of the cliff and the pine trees shed their cones
into the fathomless depths below.

If the approach is made at random, with no idea of reaching any
particular point by a known route, the probabilities are that it is flrsl
seen from the rim of one of the vast amphitheaters which set back from
the main chasm far into the mass of the plateau. It is such a point to
which the reader has been brought in the preceding chapter. Of course
there are degrees in the magnitude and power of the pictures presented,
but the smallest and least powerful is tremendous and too great for
comprehension. The scenery of the amphitheaters far surpasses in
grandeur and nobility anything else of the kind in any other region,
but it is mere by-play in comparison with the panorama displayed in
the heart of the canon. The supreme views are to be obtained at the
extremities of the long promontories, which jut out between these
recesses far into the gulf. Towards such a point we now direct our
steps. The one we have chosen is on the whole the most commanding
5n the Kaibab front, though there are several others which might be
regarded as very nearly equal to it, or as even more imposing in some
respects. We named it Point tiiiblime.

The route is of the same character as that we have already traversed —
open pine forest, with smooth and gently rolling ground. The distance
from the point where we first touched the rim of the amphitheater is
about five miles. Nothing is seen of the chasm until about a mile from
the end we come once more upon the brink. Beaching the extreme
verge the packs are cast off and sitting upon the edge we contemplate
the most sublime and awe-inspiring spectacle in the world.

The Grand Canon of the Colorado is a great innovation in modern
ideas of scenery, and in our conceptions of the grandeur, beauty, and
power of nature. As with all great innovations it is not to be compre-
hended in a day or a week, nor even in a month. It must be dwelt
upon and studied, and the study must comprise the slow acquisition of

142

i<i:iton.

THE CHASM IN THE KAIBAB

143

14. — A lateral amphitheater of the second order,

the meaning and spirit of that marvelous scenery which characterizes

the Plateau country, and of which the great chasm is the superlative
manifestation. The study and slow mastery of the influences of that
class of scenery and its full appreciation is a special culture, requiring
time, patience, and long familiarity for its consummation. The lover of
nature, whose perceptions have been trained in the Alps, in Italy, Ger-
many, or New England, in the Appalachians or Cordilleras, in Scotland
or Colorado, Avould enter this strange region with a shock, and dwell
there for a time with a sense of oppression, and perhaps with horror.

r. 8. QBOLOGIQdl SURVEY,

ANNVAl REPORT 1881. PL. AAA'/.

..-■■■ - ■ • - ■ .:,■■ .. . ....................... .. .. ,

■ -• .' w . . . ' - • ..... .•, '.w^:-:,

'

r -A

.

ipfTun

■

I

■

'."'»■.

rt^

"He

.-- - "— * .

. . . .

s •' ■ ■

3w ^$H«

.

^*^?^;
**!£*

■ ■

■

■ -,.,- *r ' ■

ill :l^mil •

J ■
'v ,

1 r v

'*

&

■■■

'<<:

-* : -; w'-

■""A

•

I©

'. (•

__ . .

>•";

'I- j

j ■-

^-a^

. id&j

*V*V

'JHSft:

\

■ft/

m

THE PANORAMA FROM POINT SUBLIME— LOOKING HAST.

144 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

Whatsoever things he had learned to regard as beautiful and noble he
would seldom or never see, and whatsoever he might see would appear
to him as anything but beautiful and noble. Whatsoever might be bold
and striking would at first seem only grotesque. The colors would be
the very ones he had learned to shun as tawdry and bizarre. The
tones and shades modest and tender, subdued yet rich, in which his
fancy had always taken special delight, would be the ones which arc
conspicuously absent. But time would bring a gradual change. Some
day he would suddenly become conscious that outlines which at first
seemed harsh and trivial have grace and meaning; that forms which
seemed grotesque are full of dignity; that magnitudes which had added
enormity to coarseness have become replete with strength and even
majesty; that colors which had been esteemed unrefined, immodest,
and glaring, are as expressive, tender, changeful, and capacious of effects
as any others. Great innovations, whether in art or literature, in science
or in nature, seldom take the world by storm. They must he under-
stood before they can be estimated, and must be cultivated before they
can be understood.

It is so with the Grand Canon. The observer who visits its command-
ing points with the expectation of experiencing forthwith a rapturous
exaltation, an ecstacy arising from the realization of a degree of grandeur
and sublimity never felt before, is doomed to disappointment. Suppos-
ing him to be but little familiar with plateau scenery, he will be simply
bewildered. Must he therefore pronounce it. a failure, an overpraised
thing? Must he entertain a just resentment towards those who may
have raised his expectations too high? The answer is that subjects
which disclose their full power, meaning, and beauty as soon as they
are presented to the mind have very little of those qualities to disclose.
Moreover a visitor to the chasm or to any other famous scene must neces-
sarily come there (for so is the human mind constituted) with a picture
of it created by his own imagination. He reaches the spot, the conjured
picture vanishes in an instant, and the place of it must be Idled anew.
Surely no imagination can construct out of its. own material any picture
having the remotest resemblance to the Grand Canon. In truth the
first step in attempting a description is to beg the reader to dismiss
from his mind, so far as practicable, any preconceived notion of it.

Those who have long and carefully studied the Grand Canon of the
Colorado do not hesitate for a moment to pron ounce it by far the most sub-
lime of all earthly spectacles. If its sublimity consisted only in its
dimensions, it could be sufficiently set forth in a single sentence. It is
more than 200 miles long, from 5 to 12 miles wide, and from 5,000 to
0,000 feet deep. There are in the world valleys which are longer and a
few which are deeper. There are valleys flanked by summits loftier
than the palisades of the Kaibab. Still the Grand Canon is the sub-
limest thing on earth. It is so not alone by virtue of its magnitudes,
but by virtue of the whole — its ensemble.

DL'TTON'.

THE CHASM IN THE KAIBAB. 14T)

The common notion of a canon is that of a deep, narrow gash in the
earth, with nearly vertical walls like a great and neatly cut trench.
There are hundreds of chasms in the Plateau country which answer
very well to this notion. Many of them are sunk to frightful depths and
are fifty to a hundred miles in length. Some are exceedingly narrow, as
the canons of the forks of the Virgen, where the overhanging walls shut
out the sky. Some are intricately sculptured, and illuminated with bril-
liant colors ; others are picturesque by reason of their bold and striking
sculpture. A few of them are most solemn and impressive by reason of
their profundity and the majesty of their walls. But as a rule the com-
mon canons are neither grand nor even attractive. Upon first acquaint-
ance they are curious and awaken interest as a new sensation, but they
soon grow tiresome for want of diversity, and become at last mere bores.
The impressions they produce are very transient, because of their great
simplicity and the limited range of ideas they present But there are
some which are highly diversified, presenting many attractive features.
These seldom gr m stale or wearisome, and their presence is generally
greeted with pleasure.

It is perhaps in some respects unfortunate that the stupendous path-
way of the Colorado River through the Kaibabs was ever called a canon,
for the name identifies it with the baser conception. But the name pre-
sents as wide a range of signification as the word house. The log cabin
of the rancher, the painted and vine-clad cottage of the mechanic, the
home of the millionnaire, the places where parliaments assemble, and the
grandest temples of worship, are all houses. Yet the cratrast between
Saint Marc's and the rude dwelling of the frontiersman is not greater
than that between the chasm of the Colorado and the trenches in the
rocks which answer to the ordinary conception of a canon. And as a
great cathedral is an immense development of the rudimentary idea
involved in the four walls and roof of a cabin, so is the chasm an expan-
sion of the simple type of drainage channels peculiar to the Plateau
country. To the conception of its vast proportions must be added some
notion of its intricate plan, the nobility of its architecture, its colossal
buttes, its wealth of ornamentation, the splendor of its colors, and its
wonderful atmosphere. All of these attributes combine with infinite
complexity to produce a whole which at first bewilders and at length
overpowers.

From the end of Point Sublime, the distance across the chasm to the
nearest point in the summit of the opposite wall, is about 7 miles. This,
however does not fairly express the width of the chasm, for both walls
are recessed by wide amphitheaters, setting far back into the platform
of the country and the promontories are comparatively narrow strips be-
tween them. A more correct statement of the general width would be
from 11 to 12 miles This must dispose at once of the idea that the
chasm is a narrow gorge of immense depth and simple form. It is some-
what unfortunate that there is a prevalent idea that in some way an
10 G A

I . S, GEOLOGICAL SI /.'I /.).

a.\MAL BEPOHT IS8L I'L. X.X.XU.

■

-

THE PANORAMA FROM POINT SUBLIME— LOOKING SOUTH.

146 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

essential part of the grandeur of the Grand Canon is the narrowness of
its defiles. Much color has been gives to this notion by the first illustra-
tions of the canon from the pencil of Egloffstein in the celebrated report
of Lieutenant Ives. Never was a great subject more artistically mis-
represented or more charmingly belittled. Nowhere in the Kaibab sec-
tion is any such extreme narrowness observable, and even in the Uin-
karet section the width of the great inner gorge; is a little greater than
the depth. In truth a little reflection will show that such a character
would be inconsistent with the highest and strongest effects. For it is
obvious that some notable width is necessary to enable the eye to see the
full extent of the walls. In a chasm one mile deep, and only a thousand
feet wide, this would be quite impossible. If we compare the Marble
Canon or the gorge at theToroweap with wider sections it will at once be
seen that the wider ones are much stronger. If we compare one of the
longer alcoves having a width of 3 or 4 miles with the view across the
main chasm the advantage will be very decidedly with the latter. It
is evident that for the display of wall surface of given dimensions a cer-
tain amount of distance is necessary. We may be too near or too far
for the right appreciation of its magnitude and proportions. The dis-
tance must bear some ratio to the magnitude. But at what precise
limit this distance must in the present case be fixed is not easy to deter-
mine. It can hardly be doubted that if the canon were materially nar-
rower it would suffer a loss of grandeur and effect.

The length of canon revealed clearly and in detail at Point Sublime
is about 25 miles in each direction. Towards the northwest the vista
terminates behind the projecting mass of Powell's Plateau. But again
to the westward may be seen the crests of the upper walls reaching
through the Kanab and Uinkaret Plateaus, and finally disappearing
in the haze about 75 miles away.

The space under immediate view from our stand-point, 50 miles long
and 10 to 12 wide, is thronged with a great multitude of objects so vast
in size, so bold and majestic in form, so infinite in their details, that as the
truth gradually reveals itself to the perceptions it arouses the strongest
emotions. Unquestionably the overruling feature is the colossal wall
on the opposite side of the gulf. Can mortal fancy create a picture of a
mural front a mile iu height, 7 to 10 miles distant, and receding into space
indefinitely in either direction ? As the mind strives to realize its pro-
portions its spirit is broken and its imagination completely crushed.
If the wall were simple in its character, if it were only blank and sheer,
some rest might be found in contemplating it; but it is full of diversity
and eloquent with grand suggestions. It is deeply recessed by alcoves
and amphitheaters receding far into the plateau beyond, and usually
disclosing only the portals by which they open into the main chasm.
Between them the promontories jut out, ending in magnificent gables
with sharp mitered angles. Thus the wall rambles in and out, turning
numberless corners. Many of the angles are acute and descend as sharp

duttox.] THE CHASM IN THE KAIBAB. 147

spurs like the forward edge of a plowshare. Only those alcoves which
are directly opposite to us can be seen in their full length and depth.
Yet so excessive, nay so prodigious, is the effect of foreshortening, that it
is impossible to realize their full extensions. We have already noted
this effect in the Vermilion Cliffs, but here it is much more exaggerated.
At many points the profile of the facade is thrown into view by the
change of trend, and its complex character is fully revealed. Like that
of the Vermilion Cliffs, it is a series of many ledges and slopes, like a
molded plinth, in which every stratum is disclosed as a line or a course
of masonry. The Red Wall limestone is the most conspicuous member,
presenting its vertical face eight hundred to a thousand feet high, and
everywhere unbroken. The thinner beds more often appear in the
slopes as a succession of ledges projecting through the scanty talus
which never conceals them.

Numerous detached masses are also seen flanking the ends of the lon«-
promontories. These buttes are of gigantic proportions, and yet so over-
whelming is the effect of the wall against which they are projected that
they seem insignificant in mass, and the observer is often deluded by
them, failing to perceive that they are really detached from the wall
and perhaps separated from it by an interval of a mile or two.

At the foot of this palisade is a platform through which meanders the
inner gorge in whose dark and somber depths flows the river. Only in
one place can the water surface be seen. In its windings the abyss,
which holds it extends for a short distance towards us and the line of
vision enters the gorge lengthwise. Above and below this short reach
the gorge swings its course in other directions and reveals only a dark,
narrow opening, while its nearer wall hides its depths. This inner chasm
is 1,000 to 1,200 feet deep. Its upper 200 feet is a vertical ledge of
sandstone of a dark rich brownish color. Beneath it lies the granite
of a dark iron-gray shade, verging towards black, and lending a gloomy
aspect to the lowest deeps. Perhaps a half mile of the river is disclosed.
A pale, dirty red, without glimmer or sheen, a motionless surface, a
small featureless spot, inclosed in the dark shade of the granite, is all
of it that is here visible. Yet we know it is a large river, a hundred
and fifty yards wide, with a headlong torrent foaming and- plunging
over rocky rapids.

A little, and only a little, less impressive than the great wall across the
chasm are the buttes upon this side. And such buttes! All others in
the West, saving only the peerless Temples of the Virgen, are mere trifles
in comparison with those of the Grand Canon. In nobility of form, beauty
of decoration, and splendor of color, the Temples of the Virgen must, on
the whole, be awarded the palm ; but those of the Grand Canon, while
barely inferior to them in those respects, surpass them in magnitude and
fully equal them in majesty. But while the Valley of the Virgen pre-
sents a few of these superlative creations, the Grand Canon presents
them by dozens. In this relation the comparison would be analogous

r. s. cKoi.oaiCAi.srKVKY.

A.WIAL REPORT 1SS1. PL. AAA///.

,..

' "

ft K

TIIK PANORAMA PROM POINT SUBLIME— LOOKING WEST,

W m K m u

148

GRAND (ANON DISTRICT.

to one between a fine cathedral town and a metropolis like London
or Paris. In truth, there is only a very limited ground of comparison
between the two localities, for in style and effects their respective struct-
ures differ as decidedly as the works of any two well developed and
strongly contrasted styles of human architecture.

Whatsoever is forcible, characteristic, and picturesque in the rock-
forms of the Plateau country is concentrated and intensified to the utter-
most in the bnttes. Wherever we find them, whether fringing the long
escarpments of terraces or planted upon broad mesas, whether in canons
or upon expansive plains, they are always bold and striking in outline
and ornate in architecture. Upon their thinks and entablatures the deco-
ration peculiar to the formation out of which they have been carved is
most strongly portrayed and the profiles are most sharply cut. They
command the attention with special force and quicken the imagination

fi#

vliiii^

Fie;. 15 — Pinnacles on the brink.

with a singular power. The secret of their impressiveness is doubtless
obscure. Why one form should be beautiful and another unattractive;
why one should be powerful, animated, and suggestive, while another
is meaningless, are questions for the psychologist rather than the
geologist. Sufficient here is the fact. Yet there are some elements of
impressiveness which are too patent to escape recognition. In nearly
all bnttes there is a certain dcjinitcnc.ss of form which is peculiarly em-
phatic, and this is seen in their profiles. Their ground-plans are almost
always indefinite and capricious, but the profiles are rarely so. These
are usually composed of lines which have an approximate and sometimes

dutton.] THE CHASM IN THE KAIBAB. 149

a sensibly perfect geometrical definition. They are usually few and sim-
ple in their ultimate analysis, though by combination they give rise to
much variety. The ledges are vertical, the summits are horizontal, and
the taluses are segments of hyperbolas of long curvature and concave
upwards. These lines greatly preponderate in all cases, and though
others sometimes intrude they seldom blemish greatly the effects pro
duced by the normal ones. All this is in striking contrast with the ever-
varying, indefinite profiles displayed in mountains and hills or on the
slopes of valleys. The profiles generated by the combinations of these
geometric lines persist along an indefinite extent of front. Such vari-
ations as occur arise not from changes in the nature of the lines, but in
the modes of combination and proportions. These are never great in
any front of moderate extent, but are just sufficient ^o relieve it from a
certain monotony which would otherwise prevail. The same type and
general form is persistent. Like the key-note of a song, the mind carries
it in its consciousness wherever the harmony wanders.

The horizontal lines or courses are equally strong. These are the
edges of the strata, and the deeply eroded scams where the superposed
beds touch each other. Here the uniformity as we pass from place to
place is conspicuous. The Carboniferous strata are quite the same in
every section, showing no perceptible variation in thickness through
great distances and only a slight dip.

It is readily apparent, therefore, that the effect of these profiles and
horizontal courses so persistent in their character is highly architectural.
The relation is more than a mere analogy or suggestion; it is a vivid
resemblance. Its failure or discordance is only in the ground plan, though
it is not uncommon to find a resemblance, even in this respect, among
the Permian buttes. Among the buttes of the Grand Canon there are
few striking instances of definitenessin ground plan. The finest Lutte
of the chasm is situated near the upper end of the Kaibab division;
but it is not visible from Point Sublime. It is more than 5,000 feet
high, and has a surprising resemblance to an Oriental pagoda. We
named it Vishnu's Temple.

On either side of the promontory on which we stand is a side gorge
sinking nearly 1,000 feet below us. The two unite in front of the point,
and, ever deepening, their trunk opens into the lowest abyss in the granite
at the river. Across either branch is a long rambling mass, one on the
right of us the other on the left. We named them the Cloisters. They
are excellent types of a whole class of buttes which stand iu close prox-
imity to each other upon the north side of the chasm throughout the
entire extent of the Kaibab division. A far better conception of their
forms and features can be gained by an examination of Mr. Holmes's
panoramic picture than by leading a whole volume of verbal descrip-
t ion. The whole prospect, indeed, is filled with a great throng of similar
objects, which, as much by their multitude as by their colossal size, con-
fuse the senses; but these, on account of their proximity, may be most

/. >. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

ASM A I. HEPOUT 1881. PL XXXIV.

. Jm .'■ ■ ;

... ■■-..'.JLisii-. ■ , ,;'ii

. -^ ;.: v ■'■■■ V '^^ - -

> i, ( ■' '•' ,PP. t :.■■■- '■'■' \' ■■ ■ 4- ■■■■■■

■■■'-... ,-/;A't--.i'-^->." ; \ .-■■»' Y',*-. ." v- . > : : ; ft

' -

^>£ . . . • :. ; !i.y. ,V^!W ■•■• •■

I fits,-' v- '

£

'■' /

y

■

;

^■a:

VISHNU'S TEMPLE— HEAD OF THE GRAND CAfJON.

150 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

satisfactorily studied. The infinity of sharply defined detail is amazing.
The eye is instantly caught and the attention firmly held by its sys-
tematic character. The parallelism of the lines of bedding is most forci-
bly displayed in all the windings of the facades, and these lines arc
crossed by the vertical scorings of numberless water-ways. Here, too,
are distinctly seen those details which constitute the peculiar style of
decoration prevailing throughout all the buttes and amphitheaters of
the Kaibab. The course of the walls is never for a moment straight,
but extends as a series of cusps and re-entrant curves. Elsewhere the
reverse is more frequently seen ; the projections of the wall are rounded
and are convex towards the front, while the reentrant portions are cusp.
like recesses. This latter style of decoration is common in the Permian
buttes and is not rare in the Jurassic. It produces the effect of a thickly
set row of pilasters. In the Grand Canon the reversal of this mode pro-
duces the effect of panels and niches. In the western Cloister may be
seen a succession of these niches, and though they are mere details
among myriads, they are really vast in dimensions. Those seen in the
Ked Wall limestone are over 700 feet high, and are overhung by arched
lintels with spandrels.

As we contemplate these objects we find it quite impossible to real-
ize their magnitude. Not only are we deceived, but we are conscious
that we are deceived, and yet we cannot conquer the deception. We
cannot long study our surroundings without becoming aware of an
enormous disparity in the effects produced upon the senses by objects
which are immediate and equivalent ones which are more remote. The
depth of the gulf which separates us from the Cloisters cannot be real-
ized. We crane over the brink, and about 700 feet below is a talus,
which ends at the summit of the cross-bedded sandstone. We may see
the bottom of the gorge, which is about 3,800 feet beneath us, and yet
the talus seems at least half way down. Looking across the side gorge
the cross-bedded sandstone is seen as a mere band at the summit of the
Cloister, forming but a very small portion of its vertical extent, and
whatever the reason may conclude, it is useless to attempt to persuade
the imagination that the two edges of the sandstone lie in the same
horizontal plane. The eastern Cloister is nearer than the western, its
distance being about a mile and a half. It seems incredible that it
can be so much as one-third that distance. Its altitude is from 3,500
to 4,000 feet, but any attempt to estimate the altitude by means of
visual impressions is felt at once to be hopeless. There is no stadium.
Dimensions mean nothing to the senses, and all that we are conscious
of in this respect is a troubled sense of immensity.

Beyond the eastern Cloister, five or six miles distant, rises a gigantic
mass which we named Shiva's Temple. It is the grandest of all the
buttes, and the most majestic in aspect, though not the most ornate.
Its mass is as great as the mountainous part of Mount Washington.
That summit looks down 0,000 feet into the dark depths of the iuner

dotiok.] THE CHASM IN THE KAIBAB. 151

abyss, over a succession of ledges as impracticable as the face of Bunker
Hill Monument. All around it are side gorges sunk to a depth nearly
as profound as that of the main channel. It stands in the midst of a
great throng of cloister-like buttes, with the same noble profiles and
strong lineaments as those immediately before us, with a plexus of awful
chasms between them. In such a stupendous scene of wreck it seemed
as if the fabled "Destroyer" might find an abode not wholly uncongenial.

In ail the vast space beneath and around us there is very little upon
which the mind can linger restfully. It is completely filled with objects
of gigantic size and amazing form, and as the mind wanders over them
it is hopelessly bewildered and lost. It is useless to select special points
of contemplation. The instant the attention lays hold of them it is drawn
to something else, and if it seeks to recur to them it cannot find them.
Everything is superlative, transcending the power of the intelligence
to comprehend it. There is no central point or object around which the
other elements are grouped and to which they are tributary. The grand-
est objects are merged in a congregation of others equally grand. Hun-
dreds of these mighty structures, miles in length, and thousands of feet
in height, rear their majestic heads out of the abyss, displaying their
richly-molded plinths and friezes, thrusting out their gables, wing-walls,
buttresses, and pilasters, and recessed with alcoves and panels. If any
one of these stupendous creations had been planted upon the plains of
Central Europe it would have influenced modern art as profoundly as
Fusiyama has influenced the decorative art of Japan. Yet here they are
all swallowed up in the confusion of multitude. It is not alone the mag-
nitude of the individual objects that makes this spectacle so portentous,
but it is still more the extravagant profusion with which they arc ax
rayed along the whole visible extent of the broad chasm.

The color effects are rich and wonderful. They are due to the inherent
colors of the rocks, modified by the atmosphere. Like any other great
series of strata in the Plateau Province, the Carboniferous has its own
range of characteristic colors, which might serve to distinguish it even
if we had no other criterion. The summit strata are pale gray, with a,
faint yellowish cast. Benealh them the cross-bedded sandstone appears
showing a mottled surface of pale pinkish hue. Underneath this member
are nearly 1,000 feet of the lower Aubrey sandstones, displaying an in-
tensely brilliant red, which is somewhat masked by the talus shot down
from the grey, cherty limestones at the summit, Beneath the lower
Aubrey is the face of the Red Wall limestone, from 2,000 to 3,000 feet
high. It has a strong red color, but a very peculiar one. Most of the
red strata of the west have the brownish or vermilion tones, but these
are rather purplish-red, as if the pigment had been treated to a dash
of blue. It is not quite certain that this may not arise in part from
the intervention of the blue haze, and probably it is rendered more con-
spicuous by this cause; but, on the whole, the purplish cast seems to
be inherent. This is the dominant color-mass of the canon, for the ex-

L52 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

panse of rock surface displayed is more than half in the Ked Wall group.
It is less brilliant than the fiery red of the Aubrey sandstones, but is
still quite strong and rich. Beneath are the deep browns of the lower
Carboniferous. The dark iron-black of the hoi nblendic schists revealed
in the lower gorge makes but little impression upon the boundless expanse
of bright colors above.

The total effect of the entire color-mass is bright and glowing. There
is nothing gloomy or dark in the picture except the opening of the inner
gorge, which is too small a feature to influence materially the prevailing
tone. Although the colors are bright when contrasted with normal
landscapes, they are decidedly less intense than the flaming hues of the
Trias or the dense cloying colors of the Permian; nor have they the
refinement of those revealed in the Eocene. The intense luster which
gleams from the rocks of the Plateau country is by no means lost here
but is merely subdued and kept under some restraint. It is toned down
and softened without being deprived of its character. Enough of it is
left to produce color effects not far below those that are yielded by the
Jura-Trias.

But though the inherent colors are less intense than some others, yet
under the quickening influence of the atmosphere they produce effects
to which all others are far inferior. And here language fails and de-
scription becomes impossible. Not only are their qualities exceedingly
subtle, but they have little counterpart in common experience. If such
are presented elsewhere they are presented so feebly and obscurely that
only the most discriminating and closest observers of nature ever seize
them, and they so imperfectly that their ideas of them are vague and
but half real. There are no concrete notions founded in experience upon
which a conception of these color effects and optical delusions can be
constructed and made intelligible. A perpetual glamour envelops the
landscape. Thing are not what they seem, and the perceptions cannot
tell us what they are. It is not probable that these effects are different
in kind in the Grand Cafion from what they are in other portions of the
Plateau country. But the difference in degree is immense, and being
greatly magnified and intensified many characteristics become palpable
which elsewhere elude the closest observation.

In truth, the tone and temper of the landscape are constantly varying,
and the changes in its aspect are very great. It is never the same, even
from day to day, or even from hour to hour. In the early morning its
mood and subjective influences are usually calmer and more full of
repose than at other times, but as the sun rises higher the whole scene
is so changed that we cannot recall our first impressions. Every pass-
ing cloud, every change in the position of the sun recasts the whole.
At sunset the pageant closes amid splendors that seem more than
earthly. The direction of the full sunlight, the massing of the shadows,
the manner in which the side-lights are thrown in from the clouds deter-
mine these modulations, and the sensitiveness of the picture to the
slightest variations in these conditions is very wonderful.

MMTOH.J THE CHASM IN THE KAIBAB. 153

The shadows thrown by the bold abrupt forms are exceedingly dark.
It is almost impossible at the distance of a very few miles to distinguish
even broad details in these shadows. They are like remnants of mid-
night unconquered by the blaze of noonday. The want of half tones
and gradations in the light and shade, which has already been noted in
the Vermilion Cliffs, is apparent here, and is far more conspicuous. Our
thoughts in this connection may suggest to us a still more extreme case
of a similar phenomenon presented by the half-illuminated moon when
viewed through a large telescope. The portions which catch the sunlight
shine with great luster but the shadows of mountains and cliffs are black
and impenetrable. But there is one feature in the canon which is cer-
tainly extraordinary. It is the appearance of the atmosphere against
the background of shadow. It has a metallic luster which must be seen to
be appreciated. The great wall across the chasm presents at noonday,
under a cloudless sky, a singularly weird and unearthly aspect. The
color is for the most part gone. In place of it comes this metallic glare
of the haze. The southern wall is never so poorly lighted as at noon.
Since its face consists of a series of promontories projecting towards the
north, these projections catch the sunlight on their eastern sides in the
forenoon, and upon their western sides in the afternoon; but near merid-
ian the rays fall upon a few points only, and even upon these with very
great obliquity. Thus at the hours of greatest general illumination the
wall is most obscure and the abnormal effects are then presented most
forcibly. They give rise to strange delusions. The rocks then look
nearly black, or very dark grey and covered with feebly shining spots.
The haze is strongly luminous, and so dense as to obscure the details
already enfeebled by shade as if a leaden or mercurial vapor intervened.
The shadows antagonize the perspective, and everything seems awry.
The lines of stratification, dimly seen in one place and wholly effaced in
another, are strangely belied and the strata are given apparent atti-
tudes which are sometimes grotesque and sometimes impossible.

Those who are familiar with western scenery have, no doubt, been im
pressed with the peculiar character of its haze, or atmosphere in the ar-
tistic sense of the word, and have noted its more prominent qualities.
When the air is free from common smoke it has a pale blue color which
is quite unlike the neutral gray of the east. It is always appar-
ently more dense when we look towards the sun than when we look
away from it, and this difference in the two directions, respectively, is a
maximum near sunrise and sunset. This property is universal, but its
peculiarities in the Plateau Province become conspicuous when thestrong
rich colors of the rocks are seen through it. The very air is then visible.
We see it, palpably, as a tenuous fluid and the rocks beyond it do not ap-
pear to be colored blue as they do in other regions but reveal themselves
clothed in colors of their own. The Grand Canon is ever full of this
haze. It tills it to the brim. Its apparent density, as elsewhere, is va-
ried according to the direction in which it is viewed and the position of

154 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

the sun; but it seems also to be denser and more concentrated than
elsewhere. This is really a delusion arising from the fact that the
enormous magnitude of the chasm and of its component masses dwarfs
the distances; we are really looking through miles of atmosphere under
the impression that they are only so many furlongs. This apparent con-
centration of haze, however, greatly intensifies all the beautiful or mys-
terious optical effects which are dependent upon the intervention of
the atmosphere.

Whenever the brink of the chasm is reached the chances are that the
sun is high and these abnormal effects in full force. The canon is asleep.
Or it is under a spell of enchantment which gives its bewildering mazes
an aspect still more bewildering. Throughout the long summer fore-
noon the charm which binds it grows in potency. At midday the clouds
begin to gather, first in fleecy flecks, then in cumuli and throw their
shadows into the gulf. At once the scene changes. The slumber of the
chasm is disturbed. The temples and cloisters seem to raise themselves
half awake to greet the passing shadow. Their wilted, drooping, flat-
tened faces expand into relief. The long promontories reach out from
the distant wall as if to catch a moment's refreshment from the shade.
The colors begin to glow ; the haze loses its opaque density and becomes
more tenuous. The shadows pass, and the chasm relapses into its dull
sleep again. Thus through the midday hours it lies in fitful slumber,
overcome by the blinding glare and withering heat, yet responsive to
every fluctuation of light and shadow like a delicate organism.

As the sun moves far into the west the scene again changes, slowly
and imperceptibly at first, but afterwards more rapidly. In the hot
summer afternoons the sky is full of cloud-play and the deep flushes
with ready answers. The banks of snowy clouds pour a flood of light
sidewise into the shadows and light up the gloom of the amphitheaters
and alcoves, weakening the glow of the haze and rendering visible the
details of the wall faces. At length as the sun draws near the horizon
the great drama of the day begins.

Throughout the afternoon the prospect has been gradually growing
clearer. The haze has relaxed its steely glare and has changed to a veil
of transparent blue. Slowly the myriads of details have come out and
the walls are flecked with lines of minute tracery, forming a diaper of
light and shade. Stronger and sharper becomes the relief of each pro-
jection. The promontories come forth from the opposite wall. The win-
uous lines of stratification which once seemed meaningless, distorted, and
even chaotic, now range themselves into a true perspective of graceful
curves, threading the scallop edges of the strata. The colossal buttes
expand in every dimension. Their long narrow wings, which once were
folded together and flattened against each other, open out, disclosing
between them vast alcoves illumined with Kembrandt lights tinged with
the pale refined blue of the ever-present haze. A thousand forms, hith-
erto unseen or obscure, start up within the abyss, and stand forth in

DUTTON.) THE CHASM IN THE KAIBAR. 155

strength and animation. All things seem to grow in beauty, power, and
dimensions. What was grand before has become majestic, the majestic
becomes sublime, and, ever expanding and developing, the sublime passes
beyond the reach of our faculties and becomes transcendent. The colors
have come back. Inherently rich and strong, though not superlative
under ordinary lights, they now begin to display an adventitious brill-
iancy. The western sky is all aflame. The scattered banks of cloud
and wavy cirrhus have caught the waning splendor, and shine with
orange and crimson. Broad slant beams of yellow light, shot through
the glory-rifts, fall on turret and tower, on pinnacled crest, and winding
ledge, suffusing them with a radiance less fulsome, but akin to that
which flames in the western clouds. The summit band is brilliant yel-
low; the next below is pale rose. But the grand expanse within is a
deep, luminous, resplendent red. The climax has now come. The blaze
of sunlight poured over an illimitable surface of glowing red is flung
back into the gulf, and, commingling with the blue haze, turns it into a
sea of purple of most imperial hue— so rich, so strong, so pure that
it makes the heart ache and the throat tighten. However vast the mag-
nitudes, however majestic the forms, or sumptuous the decoration, it is
in these kingly colors that the highest glory of the Grand Canon is re-
vealed.

At length the sum sinks and the colors cease to burn. The abyss
lapses back into repose. But its glory mounts upward and diffuses
itself in the sky above. Long streamers of rosy light, rayed out from
the west, cross the firmament and converge again in the east ending in
a pale rosy arch, which rises like a low aurora just above the eastern
horizon. Below it is the dead gray shadow of the world. Higher and
higher climbs the arch followed by the darkening pall of gray, and as it
ascends it fades and disappears, leaving no color except the after-glow
of the western clouds, and the lusterless red of the chasm below. Within
the abyss the darkness gathers. Gradually the shades deepen and
ascend, hiding the opposite wall and enveloping the great temples. For
a few moments the summits of these majestic piles seem to float upon
a sea of blackness, then vanish in the darkness, and, wrapped in the
impenetrable mantle of the night, they await the glory of the coming
dawn.

CHAPTER VII T.

THE EXCAVATION OF THE CHASM.

The excavation of the Grand Canon and the sculpture of its walls and
buttes are the results of two processes acting in concert — corrosion and
weathering. In discussing them it is necessary to take into the account
the peculiar conditions under which they have operated; conditions
which have no parallel in any other part of the world.

In common parlance it is customary to say, for brevity's sake, that the
rivers have cut their canons ; but the expression states only a part ot
the truth. The river has in reality cut only a narrow trench no wider
than the river's water surface. It has been the vehicle which has car-
ried away to another part of the world the materials which have been
torn from the strata by corrasion and weathering. Opening laterally into
the main chasm are many amphitheaters excavated back into the plat-
form of the country. At the bottom of each of them is a stream-bed
over which in some cases a perenni d river flows, while in other cases
the flows are spasmodic. Like the trunk river these streams have cor-
raded their channels to depths varying somewhat among themselves,
but generally a little less than the depth of the central chasm. These
tributaries often fork, and the forks are in the foregoing respects quite
homologous to the main amphitheaters. Down the faces of the walls
and down the steep slopes of the taluses run thousands of rain gullies.
When the rain comes freely it gathers into rills which cascade down
the wall clefts and rush headlong through the troughs in the talus carry-
ing an abundance of sand and grit. These waters scour out their little
channels in much the same way as their united waters cut down their
beds in the amphitheaters of the second and iirst orders, and in the main
chasm itself. But the work of flowing water, whether in the main chan-
nel or in an amphitheater, or in a gully or cranny of the cliff', is limited
to two functions. The first is the cutting of a channel no wider than
the surface of the stream ; the second is the transportation of the debris.
Corrasion alone then could never have made the Grand Canon what it
is. Another process, acting conjointly with corrasion and dependent
upon it, has effected by far the greater part of the excavation. This
other process is weathering. In order to comprehend their combined
action it is necessary to study their action in detail, and to study also the
special conditions under which they have operated here. We shall find
the subject a very complicated one.
156

DL'TTON.

ANALYSIS OF CORRASION. 157

CORRASION.

Mr. G. K. Gilbert has embodied in bis admirable monograph on the
Henry Mountains, a chapter on Laud Sculpture, wbicli sets forth in
most logical and condensed form the mechanical principles which enter
into the problems of erosion. In bis analysis may be found a discussion
of the conditions under which the sculpturing forces and processes
achieve such peculiar results as we observe in tbe Plateau country.

The perusal of that chapter "will give to the geologist's comprehension of
tbe subject a most delightful definiteness and precision, and the reader,
however learned he may be, will take great satisfaction in finding a
subject so complex made so intelligible. The principles laid down by
Mr. Gilbert will be adopted here and applied. For that purpose I quote
from the chapter referred to such statements as are of immediate service.

The mechanical wear of streams is performed by the aid of hard mineral fragments
carried along by the current. The effective force is that of the current ; the tools are
mud, sand, and bowlders. The most important of them is sand; it is chiefly by the
impact and friction of grains of sand that the rocky beds of streams are disintegrated.

Where a stream has all the load of a given degree of comminution which it is
capable of carrying, the entire energy of the descending water and load is consumed
in the translation of the water aud load, and there is none applied to corrasion. If
it has an excess of load, its velocity is thereby diminished so as to lessen its competence
and a portion is dropped. If it has less than a full load, it is in condition to receive
more, aud it corrades its bottom. A fully-loaded stream is on the verge between cor-
rasion and deposition. * * * The work of transportation may thus monopolize ;•,
Stream to the exclusion of corrasion, or the two works may be carried forward at the
same time.

The rapidity of mechanical corrasion depends on the hardness, size, and number
of the transient fragments, on the hardness of the rock-bed, and on the velocity of the
stream. * * * The element of velocity is of double importance, since it determines
not only the speed, but, to a great extent, the size of the pestles which grind the rocks.
The co-efficients upon which it [velocity] in turn depends, namely, declivity and
quantity of water, have the same importance in corrasion that they have in transpor-
tation.

Let us suppose that a stream endowed with a constant volume of water is atsomo
point continuously supplied with as great a load as it is capable of carrying For so
great a distance as its velocity remains the same, it will neither corrade nor deposit,
but will leave the declivity of its bed unchanged. But if in its progress it reaches a
place where a less declivity of bed gives a diminished velocity, its capacity for trans-
portation will become less than the load, and a part of the load will be deposited. Or
if in its progress it reaches a place where a greater declivity of bed gives an increased
velocity, the capacity for transportation will become greater than the load and there
will be corrasion of the bed. In this way a stream which has a supply of debris equal
to its capacity tends to build up the gentler slopes of its bed and to cut away the
steeper. It tends to establish a single uniform grade.

Let us now suppose that the stream, after having obliterated all of the inequalities
of t he grade of its bed, loses nearly the whole of its load. Its velocity is at once accel-
erated and vertical corrasion begins through its whole length. Since the stream has
the same declivity, and consequently tho same velocity, at all points, its capacity for
corrasion isevery where the same. Its rate of corrasion, however, will depend upon the
character of its bed. Where the rock is hard, corrasion will be less rapid than where

U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

AXStAL HEl'OlCl 1881. PL. XXXV.

— ■ : -'i i§§ '

■ ;~- -;- — -' ^ zr*r- -■' ,-r*:- .,vr T7 err-, _^ ^ </2''>''' V I -> ' „ _

v ^>v ...... - -\ — - E -«■- ^' • ■ -• •' '.' ■> .: ; , .' , ~ ;v; T'-^vt^Wt i- - - ~"'-~~ ; - -rr-r-rr"! ■ *" _, L ., ' - - — — - .■"-"•

fnSr^^T^v's-VsV '''-.'^'4, > , 'v^*<S l S!S*L-^^: '- .'"~: ; "■""".- ■ - ' '""

: . ■ --

O. \ i '. v

1

^^y^gg ^- ^ ^ -- r J^ ' lr Vj^p Pyr~^!j^ ^^

z,-^;:7^^--

■

- — i

- - * •^ir : "^"' ' ' • -'-

,- " ' ?

6MMM ■ @*

f,

VIEW FROM THE EASTERN BRINK OF THE KAIBAB— OVERLOOKING THE MARBLE CANON PLATFORM.

158 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

it is soft, and there will result inequalities of grade. But so soon as there is inequal-
ity of grade there is inequality of velocity and inequality of capacity for corrasiou;
and where hard rocks have produced declivities, there the capacity for corrasion will
be increased. The differentiation will proceed until the capacity for corrasion is every-
where proportional to the resistance to be encountered; that is, until there is equi-
librium of action.

In general we may say that a stream tends to equalize its work in all parts of its
course. Its power inheres in its fall, and each foot of fall has the same power. When
its work is to corrade and the resistance unequal, it concentrates its energy where the
resistance is great by crowding many feet of descent into a small space, and diffuses it
where the resistance is small by using but a small fall in a long distance. When its
work is to transport, the resistance is constant and the fall is evenly distributed by a
uniform grade. When its work includes both transportation and corrasion, as in the
usual case, its grades are somewhat unequal and the inequality is greatest when the
load is least.

The foregoing analysis is applicable to the Colorado. It is, in respect
to corrasion, an exceptional river. Nearly all the large rivers of the world
along their lower and middle courses have either reached, or closely ap-
proximated to, that condition of equilibrium which Mr. Gilbert speaks of,
in which the transporting power is nearly adjusted without excess to the
load to be carried. They have little or no surplus energy to spare for
corrasion, and therefore neither corrade nor deposit. But the Colorado
is corrading rapidly, and has doubtless done so with little interruption
throughout the entire period of its existence. The cause may be dis-
cerned in one important fact already brought out. The region it tra-
verses has been throughout Tertiary time steadily rising, and the total
elevation has been enormous. This progressive elevation has antag-
onized the tendency of the river to reach that adjustment of its energy
to the work of transportation alone, and has kept alive its corrasive
power. There have been probably some limited periods in the history
of the river in which, for the time being, it had sunk its channel until it
reached a " base- level " — a grade below which it could not corrade. But
this state of affairs was afterwards subverted by a further elevation
which increased the declivities of the channel, restoring the corrasive
power. The last great upheaval, exceeding in amount 3,000 feet, was of
comparatively recent occurrence, and the river has not yet reached the
new equilibrium of action and the new adjustment of its energy to the
work of simple transportation.

The reader who for the first time is brought to consider the enormous
depth of the gash which the Colorado has cut would naturally turn to
the rivers with which he is familiar to inquire whether they disclosed
evidence of similar and commensurate action. He would rarely find
any such evidence. It is only by examining the physical conditions of
the Colorado and comparing them with other rivers in the light of such
principles as Mr. Gilbert has laid down that the facts become intelligible.
The first and most important factor to be considered is its declivity. The
fall of the Colorado and its principal fork, the Green River, from Green
River Station, on the Pacific Railway, to the end of the Grand Canon, a

button. I COBRASION OF THE COLORADO. 159

distance, as the river runs, of about 1,050 miles, is about 5,150 feet, or
very nearly five feet to the mile. The fall through the Grand Canon is
on an average 7.5G feet to the mile. Taking the several divisions of the
Grand Canon, the declivity may thus be tabulated:

Declivity of the Colorado in the Grand Canon.

Fall in
Subdivisions. ,„ „ liW fiwt feet per

mile.

From Little Colorado to Kaibab division 0.0 60 6.25

Kaibab division 700 12.07

Kanab division

Uinkaret division

Sbeavwits division

Distance

Fall in

in miles.

foot.

0.G

60

58

700

47.0

240

19.2

100

84

540

>. 01
5.21
6.43

Totals i a** 1,040 7.56

The Marble Canon, with a length of 05.2 miles, has a descent of 510
feet, or an average fall of 7.82 feet per mile. When compared with the
declivities in the middle and lower courses of other large rivers, that of
the Colorado in the canons is seen to be very excessive. It falls about
as many feet as the others fall in inches. The flow of other large rivers
which are usually considered swift is calm and easy in comparison with
the rush of the waters of the Colorado.

There is another factor which would be fatal to corrasiou in other
rivers, but which in this one greatly augments its corrasive power. Not
only are few rivers so swift, but fewer still are so continuously turbid
and so heavily charged with sediment. Rarely is the river clear, even
in the droughts of midsummer. Immense quantities of sand and clay
are swept along at all parts of the year. Ordinary rivers, and even
most of the exceptional ones, would be gorged with such quantities of
sand, and instead of corrading would have their energies fully taxed in
carrying the load which the Colorado bears easily. This sand is the
tool which it employs for its work, and it uses it with great effect.
Though the river is heavily loaded, it is still underloaded, and has great
power to corrade.*

To show how efficieut the corrasive action may become under ex-
tremely favorable circumstances, we may cite the case of some of the
great hydraulic mines in California. In these mines powerful streams
of water are discharged against the gravel banks, and the spent water
is gathered into a brook which finds its way over the " bed-rock" into a
tunnel, and finally escapes into some deep natural gorge below the level
of the workings. As the water flows away it carries with it all the
debris washed from the banks, whether coarse or fine. In the well-
known Bloomfield mine I saw a gash in the solid basaltic bed-rock 12
feet in depth, which I was assured had been cut by the escaping water
and gravel in a period of about sixteen months. The actual ruuni ng

* The details of corrasion in the canon will be much more fully discussed in the
monograph on the Grand Canon District.

160 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

time of the water, however, had been equivalent to about 145 days ot
twenty-four hours each. This case is indeed a most extreme one, and
no natural river can show any such rapid corrasion of any considerable
length of its bed. It is not cited to support an inference of phenomenal
rapidity in the corrasion of the Grand Canon, but rather to illustrate
the efficiency of corrasive action when all the attendant conditions are
extremely favorable and no countervailing condition is present. But
although the Colorado is far from beiug such an extreme case as the
one just mentioned, it is still a very strong one. Yet there are some
stretches in the river where the corrasion must be proceeding at a very
rapid rate — at a rate not very many times slower than in the Bloom field
mine. These portions are in the hardest rocks, and they illustrate well
the law which Mr. Gilbert has so clearly enunciated (p. 157, line 44),

The course of the Colorado in the Grand Canon is a succession of
headlong rapids or cataracts and of smooth but swiftly-flowing reaches.
In the Kaibab division the rapids are very numerous, very long, and
very frequent, while the still reaches are short. In the Kanab division
the rapids are fewer and less formidable, while the still reaches are
longer. In the Sheavwits, the condition is intermediate between those
of the Kaibab and Kanab divisions. The rapids, however, are of two
kinds, and are the results of two wholly independent causes. (1.)
When the stream lies in the hard rocks, the declivity is much greater,
and the rapid is then due to the greater slope of the bed. (2.) At the
opening of every side-gorge, a pile of large bowlders and rubble is
pushed out into the stream. Most of the side-gorges are dry through-
out the greater part of the year. But when the rains do come, their
effects are prodigious.* In the vast amphitheaters the water is quickly
shot down into the channel and rushes with frightful velocity along the
bed, which has a slope of 2()0 feet or more to the mile. Nothing which
is loose and which lies in the way of it can resist its terrible rush.
Bowlders of many tons' weight are swept along like chaff, and go than-
ding down the side gorges into the main river. When the torrents reach
the river the large fragments are dropped; for the maximum slope of
the main stream (reckoned throughout any stretch exceeding four or five
miles) never exceeds 25 feet to the mile; and the water, though great in
volume at flood-time, has much less velocity than the torrents of the
side chasms. The river has, however, abundant power to sweep along
fragments of considerable size, which are ground up as they move on-
ward. The coarse material, the large bowlders and rubble washed out
of a lateral chasm, form a dam where the river becomes a cataract.
They are also strung out for considerable distances below the dam, and
thus the tendency is to build up and increase the grade of the river

* It is well to remember here the grand scale on which these lateral features of the
chasm are laid out. The watersheds of these amphitheaters cover each from 10 to
50 square miles! And when a heavy rain comes, whatever water is not soaked up
by the rocks and soil is in the bottom of the amphitheater in less than ten minutes!!

Dtrrrox.l WEATHERING OF CLIFFS. 161

just beyond the rapid. But this tendency is quickly checked and brought
to a stop by the increased power of the current due to the increased slope.
The body of fragments brought into the river laterally is vast in amount.
But on the whole it is insufficient at the present epoch to prevent the
river from corrading its channel, though corrasion is greatly retarded by
it. There are many stretches where there is an equilibrium between the
tendency to cut deeper and the tendency to build up the bottom by the
accumulation of d6bris; where the whole energy of the river is consumed
in dissipating the fragments brought into it. But there are other por-
tions where the river bed is in the bare rock of Palaeozoic and Archaean
strata, and wherever it is so corrasion is proceeding rapidly.

WEATHERING.

The work of corrasion is limited to the cutting of narrow gashes in
the strata, and the grinding up of the fragments brought into the river
channels. The widening of these cuts into the present configuration of
the chasm is the work of weathering. The common notion is that
"solid rock" is but little affected by any natural agents such as water
and air, and though it is acknowledged that water and carbonic acid
exert a certain nominal solvent and chemical action upon rock material,
yet these are usually esteemed so feeble that even the enormous periods
of time which the geologist invokes seem quite insufficient to warrant
us in ascribing to them any very important effects. Our observation
upon the works of human construction which have been exposed for
many centuries to the action of the elements confirms this notion.
The structures of Egypt, Greece, and Italy have been thus exposed for
periods which are nearly or even exactly known. They bear evidence
that this action is a real one, and that their final dissipation would, in
the event of indefinite exposure, be a mere question of time. But they
also indicate that so far as their own materials are concerned the pro-
cess is exceedingly slow. Their rate of decay by solution, if applied as
a factor to the recession of the walls of the Grand Canon, would give a
period of time so vast that the mind would promptly reject it because
of its very enormity. But we shall find that the recession of those walls
goes on, slowly indeed, but at a rate very much greater than would be
inferred from an inspection and comparison of the works of human an-
tiquity.

It is at once obvious that the building stones are not a fair criterion.
They are selected for their durability, and of all rocks they represent
those which offer the greatest possible resistance to weathering. Taking
the common rocks only— those of frequent and world wide occurrence —
there is reason to believe that their rates of decay under equal condi-
tions vary among themselves enormously. Leaving out of the account
the unconsolidated or loosely consolidated strata, it cannot be doubted
11 G A

U. S. GEOLOGICAL SUSVEY.

ANNUAL h'hl'OKT 1881. PI.. XXXV.

THE MAKBLK CANON.

162 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

that some indurated rocks decay fifty times faster than others, the
conditions being identical as to climate and exposure. Wo have, it
is true, no experimental or laboratory data upon which this assertion
can be based, but it is, I am confident, quite defensible, and will appear
to be so when we examine the results of weathering in the rocks in
place. For there is another consideration which is not apparent in the
decay of building-stones. The strata are disintegrated by a process
which includes something far more efficient than mere solution or chem-
ical decomposition.

At the base of every cliff in the Plateau country we find a large talus
consisting of fragments fallen from the rock faces above. The fragments
vary in size from bowlders of many tons' weight down to the finest
gravel, sand, and clay. Here is proof at once that the decay of cliffs
goes on chiefly through the breaking off of fragments. It soon appears
that the amount of material removed from the wall in solution is but a
very trifling fraction of the quantity which has spalled off from the face
of the wall. As the large fragments fall off from the vertical front they
are dashed to pieces below. In this fragmental condition they exposo
a much greater surface to weathering and are dissipated with corre-
spondingly increased rapidity. And now we come to the key of the
problem. The explanation of those persistent profiles of the Grand
Canon is found when we analyze the formation and decay of talus. It is
one of the most charming studies in the whole range of physical geology.

In the Carboniferous strata of the Grand Canon we have a mass of
rocks widely varying in lithological characters, but which on the aver-
age are just about as obdurate to weathering as the average of rocks
found in other regions. So far as can be seen or inferred, in this respect
they differ not at all from the strata of other regions. Some of them
weather easily, some are very obdurate. Perhaps the only qualification
to this comparative statement is that there are no extremely perishable
strata in the whole series. The softest beds are still firm and perfectly
indurated. The degrees of obduracy, however, appear to vary greatly
in the series.

The upper stratum in the caiion wall is a cherty limestone, which is
harder* than the average, though not extreme in that respect. It forms
usually a precipitous face, though it is frequently breached and broken
down. It is out of this series that the rows of pinnacles in the crest
of the canon are carved.t Beneath it is another series of limestones
of less than average hardness. They are sometimes a little cherty

* In speaking here of relative hardness and softness, I wish to he understood as
meaning the resistance which the rock opposes to destruction by direct -weathering,
and not hardness in the mineralogical sense, nor the resistance which the rocks might
offer to the tools of the stone-cutter.

t The cherty limestones are full of silicious nodules. They occur in vast numhers
and show a tendency to arrange themselves in hands parallel with the hedding. The
inclosing matrix, though mainly calcareous, has much disseminated silica in the
cherty form. In the weathering tho nodules are dissolved out of the matrix and fall
down the cliffs.

DUTTON.)

DEVELOPMENT OF CLIFF PROFILES.

163

but far less so than the overlying beds. They break down always into
a steep slope, covered with a talus partly of their own debris and
partly of the cherty nodules weathered out from above. Beneath the
limestones lies the cross-bedded sandstone, one of the most conspicu-
ous members of the cailon. Of all the strata it is the hardest ; in truth,
is about as adamantine as any rock to be found in the world. It forms
everywhere the vertical frieze of the upper wall and is very seldom
broken down into a slope. Underneath it comes the great series of
Lower Aubrey sandstones, a thousand feet thick, made up of very many
individual beds. They are similar in character, and all of them weather
rapidly. We have, then, in the Upper and Lower Aubrey Groups, which
form the outer chasm wall at the Toroweap (and which are almost ex-
actly the same elsewhere throughout the Grand Canon), four groups of
strata which are alternately hard and soft (Fig. 1G), (1) a hard cherty
limestone, (2) a softer limestone, (3) an extremely hard sandstone, (4) a
great thickness of much softer sandstones.

Fig. 16. — Development of cliff profiles by recession in the nppor wall of the chasm.

It has already been explained that the attack of erosion is made chiefly
upon the scarp walls and steep slopes of a country and only feebly upon
level surfaces. Imagine, now, a cut made by a corrading stream into
such a series of strata as that which has just been described. It will
soon appear that it is quite immaterial whether the cut be made very
gradually or instantly,— by a miracle, as we may suppose. Weathering
at once attacks the face of the wall. The softer beds yielding much more
rapidly, gradually undermine the harder ones above, and the latter cleave
off by their joints and great fragments fall down. If we suppose the
corraded cut to have been made instantly and the river to be flowing in
it, the fragments would at first fall into the stream and be devoured by
corrasion as fast as they fall. But after a time the widening of the cut
so produced would leave a platform on the margin of the stream where
the fragments would begin to form a talus. As the recession by waste
goes on, the talus grows larger and larger, and gradually mounts up on
the breast of the lower wall, i?ow the effect of a talus is to protect the
beds upon whose edges it lies, and to retard their rate of decay by virtue

164 GRAND CANON DISTRICT.

of tli.it protection. At first, then, the talus causes the lowest beds to
lag behind in the recession. As it mounts up the wall, higher and higher
beds gain protection, and they, too, begin to lag behind, until at last
the talus mounts up very nearly to the base of the extremely hard, cross-
bedded sandstone. Thus the entire lower series of soft strata becomes
converted into a slope covered with talus, and at this stage all the beds
above stand as a single vertical face. But immediately a second cliff
and talus begin to form above the hard sandstone; for since the lower
soft beds are protected and their rate of recession reduced by the talus,
the upper soft beds, being naked, must recede at a more rapid rate, until
they, too, become a slope and receive the protection of a talus from the
hard limestone at the summit.

It appears, then, that the recession of the hard beds is accelerated by
undermining, while the recession of the soft beds is retarded by the pro-
tection of the talus. The result is the final establishment of a definite
profile, which thereafter remains very nearly constant as the cliff con-
tinues to recede. Thus the talus is the regulator of the cliff profile. There
are many minor features which may be explained as satisfactorily, and
one of them is the curvature of the Lower Aubrey profile.

Throughout the greater part of the chasm the slope of the Lower
Aubrey is a very graceful curve, but in the Kaibab division it is usually
straight and descends at an inclination of about 30 degrees, the angle
of repose, or very nearly so, for the d6bris which occurs here. Taking
first the Toroweap section, we remark that at the base of the main
palisade is the broad esplanade or plain which forms the floor of the
upper chasm. It is from a mile to three miles in width. In a great talus
the fragments are slowly and continually creeping down by the action
of rain and frost. The plain at the base acts as a check to the descent.
Nowhere except, perhaps, at a notable distance away from the base or
in the very lowest part of the stratigraphic series are the beds wholly
buried in talus. Considerable areas of rock surface project through the
covering. The tendency of the descent of talus under the conditions
here considered is to give more protection to the lower beds than to the
higher. The check given to the descent of the talus by the level plain
is felt more strongly at the base of the slope than higher up. Moreover,
the finer ddbris is more readily washed down a slope of given declivity
than the coarse, and thus the ddbris at the base of the talus is finer
than that above; and fine d6bris is a more efficient protection than
coarse. In consequence of this greater protection, the recession of the
lower beds is less rapid than that of the higher ones, and in gener;il
terms the protection of any given bed in the slope is inversely propor-
tional to the square or some other complex function of its height above
the base. The curved profile at once follows, and it is demonstrably of
the hyperbolic class.

In the Kaibab the case is different. Here the mighty plinth of the
Bed Wall limestone cuts off the foot of the Lower Aubrey slope, giving

Din-row.] DETAILS OF SCULPTURE. 165

a free discharge to the fragments into the depth below. There is no
cheek to the descent of the talus; the amount of protection given by it
to all the beds of the Lower Aubrey is very nearly uniform, and the
slope becomes straight. But whenever, as sometimes happens, the top
of the Red Wall precipice stands at an unusual distance from the Lower
Aubrey, the curvature of the profile of the latter appears, and its em-
phasis is proportional to the distance which separates the vertical
planes of the Red Wall and of the cross-bedded sandstone.

Many details of repetitive or systematic sculpture are presented in
the great chasm, and they may be explained as readily as the profiles.
Only one other feature can be alluded to here, and the allusion will be
brief. It concerns the plau or horizontal projections of the component
features of the Kaibab division, the blocking out of the cloister buttes
and the temples, and their reduction to their present forms. In a gen-
eral way it is apparent that these have been originated by the profound
corrasion of short lateral tributaries of the Colorado and the subsequent
widening of the cuts into the present amphitheaters and alcoves ; the
buttes and temples being the residual masses between them. But the
contours of the latter are striking and peculiar in the extreme. They
are explained by observing that wherever recession of the cliffs takes
place it proceeds with great uniformity along the entire front. It starts
along the line of a stream which is tortuous, but as it proceeds it car-
ries back the cliff in a succession of curves, and in process of time minor
inequalities are obliterated. Eaeh larger bend of the stream gives rise
to its own curve in the trend of the wall, and where successive curves
intersect they form very sharp cusps. Everything here depends upon
uniformity in the rate of the recession of all parts of the cliff. Where
the outward spreading circles of erosion from two distinct alcoves or
amphitheaters meet by recession in opposite directions, a butte is cut off
and a saddle or "col" is formed. The cusps between two intersecting
circles are exceedingly sharp and well formed, and three circles gener-
ally give rise to a fine gable.

The peculiar cliff-forms of the Plateau country would hardly be pos-
sible in any other, for no other presents those conditions which are nec-
essary for them. These conditions may be summarized as follows:
( 1.) The great elevation of the region. ( 2.) The horizontally of the
strata. ( 3.) A series of strata containing very massive beds which dif-
fer greatly among themselves in respect to hardness, but each member
being very homogeneous in all its horizontal extent; in a word, heter-
ogeneity in vertical range and homogeneity in horizontal range. (4.)
An arid climate. The great elevation is essential to high reliefs in the
topography. Only in a high country can the streams corrade deeply,
and it is by corrasion of streams that the features are originated and
blocked out. The effect of horizontality of the strata is self-evident.
With regard to vertical heterogeneity, it is apparent that it is essential
to give diversity to profiles. If the rocks were homogeneous in vertical

U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

114"

113°

AXXUAL REPORT 1881

H°

-

— i f

I

-1 r

111!"

vC^W

\SA L T

~

L , \ k /-:

► » J —

..•'■.

4&

-

■
ft

-
ft

V.

te

4

■

1

8

110°

-

"Mi

'»!(%«> .»:,',

W ■! i

O

■

!

i I

V ''X.

Si:;:-..'

A : - .<

C

i

: %
< %

a

x

:.

::

a
I

■

ft

-7"

—

■ ■

J

—

...

A

—

A

—

\s£&

y

V

V-

X.> u i n\t a

J A ^ U

)\

%

'

■

I

■

,

■Wr

■

-

rtrsi

!

'A i

. , A ;

f

)
— -^ - - • 1

• ■ •. : J

I

r -

'

• •

%

r

r

^"flimn

!^ii#*

HAD I. A X D (' 1. 1 1- !•' 8

■

^Uv

•

Arp

s '

r'

j

.40"

) ^"r-.

sS

,

A

'V^

boi

^

la

v.

& V,

/. ■

<

v<>

i*

id

•

- . ' /

■

r"

L ^v <

r

'Vj

■ j

!

i

i

i - ,

i ■

i : -

m 4.

j :

/i-

• • .

J>:

•

"•

.

■

- V

>l . ,1
!

r-

. r

■ ■ •

■

'

-

a \ x

•Y

K

B
B

•

9' i

\ :

x> v '

.

, A

X>

■

V

V

. •.

/M

S / \

!
I

■

j

/ -

•

Tr

A

. Tr / '

i

I 1

v

. '■

I »

T Uoiis.nva.
J.ak.- Ml

Tr

If N

p

c

To

.■■

X,

•x.

d

Yd

^ uuij

Y^X

! V

Tr

A-r'i

11

*v

■

Lv tresis:

t

.

s

'•-

Cr

.

A

■

*/

'I

o

/ —

I

IS 1

Cn

,

"

j

i > Ty

!
' I '

f

3

\

£

y **

: 7

^

o

J

%

■

/

A
I

;
I

I...--

«^«« B .^

/

\ - w

^

fc

Cr v I v ^

•s

/V-.5/'/;..

■

:t

h

,-•

^

■

^D

._ — .

X

uvnn

Ml

-y

<*•*-

R\ l

A;a'

«*

%L

-v

^

* ■ w

■ i h

J- •

P \-

. -*r..

j

P- B

..

Tr

- 41

. S . P -^ :. ; ', • - v.

.

A^

I

'«■

^

t)

B

>•

•

,c

•

\

'■

v-

Q>>

-Tr

-.

:»7"

_V=V_

■ Ui -\.

t :.

\

r

-

,

P <A

Cr

(P

N \\

-

■^.

V

,

^

: Mi I

^

••-

■

^

.tf

w

a^:

*

Music M\

'->

^ >.,/

. \

A<

.

\

•"•">

r-

y-^

*%" ./^ '

- ■

■ " < J |'l |,.jl"iM'^

V.- /

X.

M

■-

-~v.

J

•\ \

of.

■

C O I

dp H

z

o

..

<

/■

r^v

f~*N . /-'

k

x

■

-

|

<

■

X Ty

\

B

\

v./

s

■

>

v

\ r '

■v y~s r^ x

X, ^— ^ w *-- •*■ ^

A

t x

^

^\r

w '

' /-> \ / f 1 / ) --

)■

Tr

^ ;l

X c

NSC }.. -~k -- A

■A

I
I - '- ■ . •• -111 - I ^

c B /

.

. ■'--

X

36"

Cr

(

■

-— \. / ■

xff\4

,'r^

V

■ -'"

'/?<

Sunset'

,-

M

t

R A D j I

r

1' 1. A T E A U

VvV

\.s'

\

[i

1 >

° Camp Verde

\.

^mr

r.\j

Rcitshawo, Di*

Cretaceous

Jurassic

Sinclair .<.- Son.LithJ'hili

Permian

Cr

Carboniferous

Cn

Airhiciin T rurhvtt' KliM^ilcAAinicsilc

'i '.as;ill

lieology try (' B.DITTON. Geologist in Charti<

1

Scale; Hi uiili-s =-. l nuh or rooo.000 nearly

S K E T C 1 1 M A P

SHOWING THE DISTRIBJUTION OF THE STRATA AND ERUPTIVE ROCKS

IX THE WESTERN PART OF THE PLATEAU PROVINCE