Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/556

538 Climb the cliff at the end of Labyrinth Cañon, and look over the plain below, and you see vast numbers of buttes scattered about over scores of miles, and every butte so regular and beautiful that you can hardly cast aside the belief that they are works of Titanic art. It seems as if a thousand battles had been fought on the plains below, and on every field the giant heroes had built a monument, compared with which the pillar on Bunker Hill is but a mile-stone. But no human hand has placed a block in all those wonderful structures. The rain-drops of unreckoned ages have cut them all from the solid rock.

Between the foot of Gray Cañon and the head of Labyrinth Cañon we descend through many hundred feet of soft shales, sandstones, marls, and gypsiferous rocks of a texture so friable that no cañon appears along the course of the Green, but, along the southern border of the terrace above the Orange Cliffs, buttes of gypsum are seen. Sometimes the faces of these buttes are as white as the heart of the alabaster from which they are carved, while in other places they are stained and mottled red and brown.

As we come near to the Book Cliffs the buttes are seen to be composed of the same beds as those seen in the escarpment, and we see the same light-blue buttresses and terraced summits.

On the terrace above the Book Cliffs, the buttes are less numerous, but the few seen have the angular, irregular appearance of the Brown Cliffs.

The summit of the high plateau through which the Cañon of Desolation is cut, is fretted into pine-clad hills, with nestling valleys and meadow-bordered lakes, for now we are in that upper region where the clouds yield their moisture to the soil. In these meadows herds of deer carry aloft with pride their branching antlers, and sweep the country with their sharp outlook, or test the air with their delicate nostrils for the faintest evidence of an approaching Indian hunter. Huge elk, with heads bowed by the weight of ragged horns, feed among the pines, or trot with headlong speed through the undergrowth, frightened at the report of the red-man's rifle. Eagles sail down from distant mountains, and make their homes upon the trees; grouse feed on the pine-nuts, and birds and beasts have a home from which they rarely wander to the desert lands below. Among the buttes on the lower terraces rattlesnakes crawl, lizards glide over the rocks, tarantulas stagger about, and red ants build their play-house mountains. Sometimes rabbits are seen, and wolves prowl in their quest; but the desert has no bird of sweet song, and no beast of noble mien.

The Toom'-pin Wu-near' Tu-weap'.—We now proceed to the discussion of Stillwater Cañon, Cataract Cañon, and Narrow Cañon, and the region of country adjacent thereto.

At the head of Stillwater Cañon the river turns to a more easterly