noble endeavors, and inciting all her children to work together toward those great ends, the advancement of knowledge and the education of mankind.
| PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE COLORADO VALLEY.[1] |
By Major J. W. POWELL.
II.—Cliffs and Cañons.
SOUTH of the Uinta Mountains, and beyond the hog-backs on either side of the river, is a district known to the Indians as Wa-ka-ri'-chits, or the Yellow Hills. This country is elaborately embossed with low, rounded, naked hills. The rocks from which they are carved are yellow clays and shales. Some few of the shales are slate-colored, others pink; none so glaring and brilliant as the Bad-Lands of Black's Fork, but the tints are soft and delicate. The whole country is carved by a net-work of water-ways, which descend rapidly toward Green River, and the intervening hills are entirely destitute of vegetation. Looking at it from an eminence, and in the light of the mid-day sun, it appears like a billowy sea of molten gold.
To the south of these Yellow Hills, and separated from them by a gently-curved but well-defined ridge of upturned sandstone, there is a broad stretch of red and buff-colored Bad-Lands. Some of the beds are highly bituminous, and a fresh fracture reveals a black surface, but usually they weather gray. Where these bituminous rocks are found, hills and mesas are seen, covered, more or less, with vegetation, and the Bad-Land forms disappear. Still farther to the south, across White River, we find a continuation of these beds, but here more shaly, and interstratified with harder beds, and the alcove structure appears, somewhat like that in the Alcove Land near Green River Station. These White River alcove lands were, by General Hughes, named "Goblin City,"
The Terrace Cañons and Cliffs.—A few miles south of the mouth of the Uinta, Green River enters the Cañon of Desolation. The walls of this gorge steadily increase in altitude to its foot, where it terminates abruptly at the Brown Cliffs; then the river immediately enters Gray Cañon, with low walls, steadily increasing in altitude until the foot is reached, where it terminates abruptly at the Book Cliffs. In like manner the walls of Labyrinth Cañon are low above, and increase in altitude as we descend the river, until the cañon terminates, as those above, in a line of cliffs. To these last we have given the name Orange Cliffs. We sometimes call these the Terrace Cañons. They are cut through three great inclined plateaus.
- ↑ From "Report on United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, Second Division." Major J. W. Powell in charge.
