THE LANDS OF UTAH. 95 
great water divide, commencing north of the Pine Valley Mountains in the 
southwest corner of the territory, runs north of the Colob Plateau and 
enters the district of the High Plateaus. It first runs eastward along the 
crest or brink of the Pink Cliffs that bound the Markagunt and Paunsagunt 
Plateaus, and then north and east in many meandering ways, now throwing 
a plateau into the western drainage, and now another into the eastern, until 
it reaches the western extremity of the Tavaputs table lands. Thence it 
runs around the western end of the Uinta Valley, throwing the Tavaputs 
table lands, the Uinta Valley, and Uinta Mountains into the Colorado 
drainage, and the Wasatch Mountains into the Desert drainage. 
These two regions are highly differentiated in orographic structure 
and other geological characteristics. The sedimentary formations of the 
eastern region are in large part of Cenozoic and Mesozoic age, though 
Paleozoic rocks appear in some localities. The Cenozoic and Mesozoic 
formations are largely composed of incoherent sands and shales with inter- 
calated beds of indurated sandstone and limestone. The great geological 
displacements are chiefly by faults and monoclinal flexures, by which the 
whole country, has been broken up into many broad blocks, so that the 
strata are horizontal or but slightly inclined, except alone the zones of 
displacement by which the several blocks are bounded. Tere the strata, 
when not faulted, are abruptly flexed, and the rocks dip at high angles. 
The Uinta Mountains are storm carved from an immense uplifted 
block. The mountains of the Canon Lands are isolated and volcanic. In 
the High Plateaus sedimentary beds are covered by vast sheets of lava. 
The sedimentary beds exposed in the mountains of the Desert region are 
of Paleozoic age, and many crystalline schists appear, while the sedimentary 
beds exposed in the valleys are Post-Tertiary. The crystalline schists and 
ancient sedimentaries of the mountains are often extensive masses of extra- 
rasated rocks. The prevailing type of orographic structure is that of 
monoclinal ridges of displacement. Blocks of strata have been turned up 
so as to incline at various angles, and from their upturned edges the mount- 
ains have been carved. But these monoclinal ridges are much complicated 
by mountain masses having an eruptive origin. 
In the eastern districts the materials denuded from the mountains and 
