PHYSICAL FEATURES OF COLORADO VALLET. 531 



noble endeavors, and inciting all her children to work together tow- 

 ard those great ends, the advancement of knowledge and the edu- 

 cation of mankind. 







PHYSICAL FEATUEES OF THE COLORADO YALLEY.' 



By Ma joe J. W. POWELL. 



II. cuffs and Canons. 



SOUTH of the Uinta Mountains, and beyond the hog-backs on 

 either side of the liver, is a district known to the Indians as 

 Wa-ka-ri'-chits, or the Yellow Hills. This country is elaborately em- 

 bossed with low, rounded, naked hills. The rocks from which they 

 are cax'ved 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 butf-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 CaS'oxs axd Cliffs. A few miles south of the 

 mouth of the Uinta, Green River enters the Caiion 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 Canon, with low walls, steadily increasing in altitude un- 

 til the foot is reached, where it terminates abi'uptly at the Book Cliffs. 

 In like manner the walls of Labyrinth Caiion are low above, and in- 

 crease in altitude as we descend the river, until the caiion terminates, 

 as those above, in a line of cliffs. To these last we have given the 

 name Oranse Cliffs. We sometimes call these the Terrace Canons. 

 They are cut through three great inclined plateaus. 



' From " Report on United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Terri- 

 tories, Second Division.'' Major J. W. Powell in charge. 



