344 



GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS AND PROGEESS FOE 1874. 



races of Indians. Among the altitudes meas- 

 ured were those of Capitol Peak, 13,800 feet; 

 Mount Daly, 13,700 feet, a peak situate near 

 the end of Elk Eange; Snow Mass, 13,785; 

 and Sofris, 12,800. Several others, among 

 which are Pyramid, Gothic, Maroon, Castile, 

 and Italia, range hetween 12,000 and 13,500 

 feet. Prof. Hayden's expedition was divided 

 into seven parties. A photographic party, un- 

 der the charge of Mr. Jackson, obtained more 

 than two thousand negatives of the scenery and 

 products of the Yellowstone region. In the 

 hitherto unexplored regions of the Elk Moun- 

 tains, the peaks range from 12,000 to 14,700 

 feet in height, and wear a constant covering 

 of snow and ice. They are composed of gran- 

 ite and sedimentary rock. The mountains 

 abound in large game, elk, antelopes, deer, and 

 grizzly bears. 



The expedition under Mr. Powell has been 

 engaged in surveying the central and north- 

 eastern parts of Utah. The positions of the 

 more important deposits of metals have been 

 determined. Extensive beds of coal have been 

 discovered. In this region also ruined towns 

 of the ancient inhabitants were discovered in 

 considerable numbers, in which were found 

 hieroglyphical writings and ancient stone im- 

 plements. 



Other similar ruins were discovered by Gen- 

 eral James H. Simpson, on the Eio Chaco, in 

 New Mexico ; thick walls of sandstone, with 

 thin plates of stone introduced between the 

 blocks. The bases of the doors and windows 

 were slabs of stone and "wood. The ground- 

 floors are divided off into narrow compart- 

 ments, with low communicating openings, often 

 not more than two and a half feet square. Some 

 of these walls are four stories high. One of 

 them is seven hundred feet in circumference in 

 the interior and twenty-five feet high, while 

 the scattered fragments around the base indi- 

 cate a much greater original altitude. 



The caflons of the Colorado Valley, which 

 have been described by Major J. W. Powell, 

 have been well explored during the surveys. 

 Among the most remarkable are the Cataract 

 Canon, below the junction of the Grand and 

 Green Rivers; the Glen Cafion, whose walls 

 are the bright-red homogeneous sandstone of 

 theTriassic age; the Marble Cafion, extending 

 from the mouth of the Paria Eiver to the 

 mouth of the Colorado Chiquito, whose sides are 

 of limestone, and near the foot are of a crystal- 

 line structure, which receives a beautiful pol- 

 ish ; white, gray, slate-color, pink, brown, and 

 saffron-colored marbles are here found, carved 

 and fretted by the waves of the river and pol- 

 ished by the floods of sand which are poured 

 over the walls during the seasons of showers, 

 giving to the walls of the caflons, which have 

 assumed architectural forms on a giant scale, 

 an appearance of great beauty and grandeur. 

 The deepest of them all is the wonderful Grand 

 Cafion. Another singular feature of this re- 

 gion is the lines of bold, often vertical, preci- 



pices, hundreds or thousands of feet high, be- 

 tween higher and lower levels, which extend 

 sometimes for hundreds of miles. The most re- 

 markable are the Brown Cliffs, the southern 

 boundary of the plateau which is cleft by the 

 Cafion of Desolation; the Azure Cliffs, the 

 edge of the plateau of the Gray Cafion ; and 

 the Orange Cliffs, a broken escarpment, which 

 stretches from the foot of the Sierra la Sal 

 across the Grand and Green Rivers, and then 

 turns its direction toward the southwest, run- 

 ning parallel to the Colorado for fifty miles, 

 and again changing its course to the south- 

 east, ends in the Sierra la Sal, fifty or sixty 

 miles from where it started. At the point 

 where the Grand and Green Rivers flow to- 

 gether to form the Colorado, the Sierra la Sal 

 rises up on the east, and on the other three 

 sides the perpendicular barrier of the Orange 

 Cliffs looms up to a dizzy height. " On every 

 side a facade of storm-carved rocks is present- 

 ed. The Indian name for this basin is Turn- 

 fin wu-neir tu-weap, the land of standing 

 rocks. Buttes, towers, pinnacles, thousands 

 and tens of thousands, of strange forms of 

 rock, naked rock of many different colors, are 

 here seen ; so that before we had learned the 

 Indian name we thought of calling it the Stone 

 Forest or Painted Stone Forest; and these 

 rocks are not fragments or piles of irregular 

 masses, but standing forms, carved by the 

 rain-drops from the solid massive beds." 



Prof. O. C. Marsh, who has visited the ex- 

 treme "West annually for some years past, for 

 the purpose of collecting geological and pale- 

 ontological specimens for Yale College, has ex- 

 plored this last season the Bad Lands of Dako- 

 ta. The remains which he met with were 

 those of tropical animals belonging to the Mio- 

 cene era, some of them entirely new species, 

 including the hipparion and many other genera 

 of the Equine family. Later in the season, with 

 a few daring and courageous companions, he 

 visited and explored the fossil district in the 

 Black Hills region, and at great risk unearthed 

 and brought to Omaha many tons of fossils, all 

 of them vertebrates, and the larger portion of 

 them mammals of many hitherto-unknown 

 genera. These treasures, so bravely won, will 

 make the paleontological collections of Yale 

 College the richest 1 in the world in fossil verte- 

 brates. 



The long-projected exploring expedition un- 

 der the command of General Ouster went over 

 the region of the Black Hills during the sum- 

 mer. The regiment, consisting of 700 men, 

 with 150 teamsters, cooks, and civilians, 100 

 army-wagons, and 650 horses, started on the 

 march from Fort Lincoln on the 2d of July. 

 Colonel Ludlow was the engineer of the ex- 

 cursion ; Prof. Winchell went as the geologist, 

 and Mr. Grinnell to study the paleontology of 

 the regions explored. They entered the moun- 

 tains from the western side, passed over the 

 eastern and southern chains, explored a con- 

 siderable part of the interior, and passed out 



