Page:EB1911 - Volume 02.djvu/582

 open to heretical misinterpretation, and not borne out by Holy Writ, which kept together the large party known as Semiarians, who under the leadership of the two Eusebiuses carried on the strife against the Nicenes and especially Athanasius. Under the sons of Constantine Christian bishops in numberless synods cursed one another turn by turn. In the western half of the empire Arianism found no foothold, and even the despotic will of Constantius, sole emperor after 351, succeeded only for the moment in subduing the bishops exiled for the sake of their belief. In the east, on the other hand, the Semiarians had for long the upper hand. They soon split up into different groups, according as they came to stand nearer to or farther from the original position of Arius. The actual centre was formed by the Homoii, who only spoke generally of a likeness  of the Son to the Father; to the left of them were the Anomoii, who, with Arius, held the Son to be unlike ( ) the Father; to the right, the Homoiousians who, taking as their catchword “likeness of nature” ( ), thought that they could preserve the religious content of the Nicene formula without having to adopt the formula itself. Since this party in the course of years came more and more into sympathy with the representatives of the Nicene party, the Homoousians, and notably with Athanasius, the much-disputed formula became more and more popular, till the council summoned in 381 at Constantinople, under the auspices of Theodosius the Great, recognized the Nicene doctrine as the only orthodox one. Arianism, which had lifted up its head again under the emperor Valens, was thereby thrust out of the state church. It lived to flourish anew among the Germanic tribes at the time of the great migrations. Goths, Vandals, Suebi, Burgundians and Langobardi embraced it; here too as a distinctive national type of Christianity it perished before the growth of medieval Catholicism, and the name of Arian ceased to represent a definite form of Christian doctrine within the church, or a definite party outside it.

ARIZONA (from the Spanish-Indian Arizonac, of unknown meaning,—possibly “few springs,”—the name of an 18th-century mining camp in the Santa Cruz valley, just S. of the present border of Arizona), a state on the S.W. border of the United States of America, lying between 31° 20′ and 37° N. lat. and 109° 2′ and 114° 45′ W. long. It is bounded N. by Utah, E. by New Mexico, S. by Mexico and W. by California and Nevada, the Colorado river separating it from California and in part from Nevada. On the W. is the Great Basin. Arizona itself is mostly included in the great arid mountainous uplift of the Rocky Mountain region, and partly within the desert plain region of the Gulf of California, or Open Basin region. The whole state lies on the south-western exposure of a great roof whose crest, along the continental divide in western New Mexico, pitches southward. Its altitudes vary from 12,800 ft. to less than 100 ft. above the sea. Of its total area of 113,956 sq. m. (water surface, 116 sq. m.), approximately 39,000 lie below 3000 ft., 27,000 from 3000 to 5000 ft., and 47,000 above 5000 ft.

Physical Features.—Three characteristic physiographic regions are distinctly marked: first the great Colorado Plateau, some 45,000 sq. m. in area, embracing all the region N. and E. of a line drawn from the Grand Wash Cliffs in the N.W. corner of the state to its E. border near Clifton; next a broad zone of compacted mountain ranges with a southern limit of similar trend; and lastly a region of desert plains, occupying somewhat more than the S.W. quarter of the state. The plateau region has an average elevation of 6000-8000 ft. eastward, but it is much broken down in the west. The plateau is not a plain. It is dominated by high mountains, gashed by superb canyons of rivers, scarred with dry gullies and washes, the beds of intermittent streams, varied with great shallow basins, sunken deserts, dreary levels, bold buttes, picturesque mesas, forests and rare verdant bits of valley. In the N.W. there is a giddy drop into the tremendous cut of the (q.v.) of the Colorado river. The surface in general is rolling, with a gentle slope northward, and drains through the Little Colorado (or Colorado Chiquito), Rio Puerco and other streams into the Grand Canyon. Along the Colorado is the Painted Desert, remarkable for the bright colours—red, brown, blue, purple, yellow and white—of its sandstones, shales and clays. Within the desert is a petrified forest, the most remarkable in the United States. The trees are of mesozoic time, though mostly washed down to the foot of the mesas in which they were once embedded, and lying now amid deposits of a later age. Blocks and logs of agate, chalcedony, jasper, opal and other silicate deposits lie in hundreds over an area of 60 sq. m. The forest is now protected as a national reserve against vandalism and commercialism. Everywhere are evidences of water and wind erosion, of desiccation and differential weathering. This is the history of the mesas, which are the most characteristic scenic feature of the highlands. The marks of volcanic action, particularly lava-flows, are also abundant and widely scattered.

Separating the plateau from the mountain region is an abrupt transition slope, often deeply eroded, crossing the entire state as has been indicated. In localities the slope is a true escarpment falling 150 and even 250 ft. per mile. In the Aubrey Cliffs and along the Mogollon mesa, which for about 200 m. parts the waters of the Gila and the Little Colorado, it often has an elevation of 1000 to 2000 ft., and the ascent is impracticable through long distances to the most daring climber. It is not of course everywhere so remarkable, or even distinct, and especially after its trend turns southward W. of Clifton, it is much broken down and obscured by erosion and lava deposits. The mountain region has a width of 70 to 150 m., and is filled with short parallel ranges trending parallel to the plateau escarpment. Many of the mountains are extinct volcanoes. In the San Francisco mountains, in the north central part of the state, three peaks rise to from 10,000 to 12,794 ft.; three others are above 9000 ft.; all are eruptive cones, and among the lesser summits are old cinder cones. The S.E. corner of Arizona is a region of greatly eroded ranges and gentle aggraded valleys. This mountain zone has an average elevation of not less than 4000 ft., while in places its crests are 5000 ft. above the plains below. The line dividing the two regions runs roughly from Nogales on the Mexican border, past Tucson, Florence and Phoenix to Needles (California), on the W. boundary. These plains, the third or desert region of the state, have their mountains also, but they are lower, and they are not compacted; the plains near the mountain region slope toward the Gulf of California across wide valleys separated by isolated ranges, then across broad desert stretches traversed by rocky ridges, and finally there is no obstruction to the slope at all. Small parts of the desert along the Mexican boundary are shifting sand.