Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/558

540 strikes the southern foot of the mountains. Within this walled area a profound gorge—Cataract Cañon—is seen, with Stillwater Cañon above, and Narrow Cañon below. The lower cañon of the Grand is also seen, and a number of lateral cañons.

Along the general slope of the district between the cañons are vast numbers of buttes. Their origin is the same as that of the buttes previously described. Often they are but monuments, or standing columns of rocks. From them is derived the Indian name Toom'-pin Wu-near' Tu-weap'—"the Land of Standing Rocks."

Adjacent to the larger cañons, especially near the junction of the Grand and Green, walled coves are found. Each main gulch branches into a number of smaller gulches above, and each of these smaller gulches heads in an amphitheatre. The escarpments of these amphitheatres are broken and terraced, and in many places two such amphitheatres are so close together that they are separated only by a narrow gorge of vertical homogeneous sandstone.

This latter, though homogeneous in general structure, is banded with red and gray, so that the walls of the amphitheatres seem painted. In many places these walls are broken, and the coves are separated by lines of monuments. Where these coves or amphitheatres are farther apart, the spaces above are naked, presenting a smooth but billowy pavement of sandstone, in the depressions of which are many water-pockets, some of them deep, preserving a perennial supply; but the greater number so shallow that the water is evaporated within a few days after the infrequent showers.

In many places, especially in the sharp angles between gulches, the rocks are often fissured, and huge chasms obstruct the course of the adventurous climber.

These cañons, and coves, and standing rocks, and buttes, and cliffs, and distant mountains, present an ensemble of strange, grand features. Weird and wonderful is the Toom!-pin Wu-near' Tu-weap'.

—The escarpment, which we call the "Vermilion Cliffs," at the foot of Glen Cañon, exposes the same beds as are seen in the face of the Orange Cliffs, at the foot of Labyrinth Cañon. It will be remembered that the beds exposed in the Terrace Cañons dip to the north. Between the Orange Cliffs and the Vermilion Cliffs, the strata are variously dipped by monoclinal folds, having their axes in a northerly and southerly direction, and the red beds are at about the same altitude above the sea at the two points. The Vermilion Cliffs which face the south form a deep, reëntering angle at the mouth of the Paria. On the east side of the Colorado, the line stretches to the southeast for many miles; on the west side, it extends, in a southwesterly direction, about fifteen miles, then turns west, and, at last, to the northwest. The general northerly dip is again observed from the mouth of the Paria to the mouth of the Colorado Chiquito.

The general surface of the country between the two points is the