IN GREEN ALASKA 



Along Green River one sees where Nature begins 

 to dream of the great canyon of the Colorado. 

 Throughout a vast stretch of country here her one 

 thought seems to be of canyons. You see them 

 on every hand, little and big, — deep, rectangular 

 grooves sunk in the plain, sides perpendicular, 

 bottom level, all the lines sharp and abrupt. All 

 the little dry water-courses are canyons, the depth 

 and breadth being about equal ; the streams have 

 no banks, only perpendicular walls. Southward 

 these features become more and more pronounced 

 till the stupendous canyon of the Colorado in Ari- 

 zona is reached. 



On our return in August we struck this formation 

 in the Bad Lands of Utah, where our train was 

 stalled a day and a half by a washout. In the Bad 

 Lands the earth seems to have been flayed alive, 

 — no skin or turf of verdure or vegetable mould any- 

 where, — all raw and quivering. The country looks 

 as if it might have been the site of enormous brick- 

 yards ; over hundreds of square miles the clay seems 

 to have been used up to the depth of fifty or a hun- 

 dred feet, leaving a floor much worn and grooved by 

 the elements. The mountains have been carved 

 and sliced but yesterday, showing enormous trans- 

 verse sections. Indeed, never before have I seen 

 the earth so vivisected, anatomized, gashed, — the 

 cuts all fresh, the hills looking as new and red as 

 butcher's meat, the strata almost bleeding. The 



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