HUNTINGTON AND GOLDTHWAIT: THE HURRICANE FAULT. 200 
distance, in well-defined lines of light and shade that mark the hard beds 
from the soft. Every sag in the beds shows itself in a curved line. 
East of the fault scarp, the Aubrey stretches away as a broad platform, 
which for miles has been swept clean of the overlying Moencopie shales. — 
It extends from Toquerville clear to the Grand eanyon, — a vast yellow 
dust-covered plain, thinly drained by dry-washes, with here and there a 
low limestone ridge, a black basaltic cone, or a highly colored Moencopie 
mesa. 
The Moencopie shales, when protected by the strong Shinarump cap, 
stand up in broad ragged mesas that are remarkable for both color and 
sculpture. From the top of one of these tables to the plain at its base, 
the bare slopes descend very steeply, with an occasional narrow bench, 
limited by a cliff, where a harder member asserts its strength. Seen 
from a distance, the alternating horizontal bands of chocolate, gray, 
lavender, and red stand out with ribbon-like uniformity and distinct- 
ness. In contour these tables are very irregular, with long headlands 
and re-entrants, down the slopes of which are cut innumerable gullies 
and ravines, systematically placed, so as to form a minute pattern of 
tapering, branching, and sprawling spurs, that give the impression of a 
conventional design. Where the shales have lost their conglomerate 
cap, however, they have either been dissected into a choppy bad-land 
topography of gullies and ridges, or, as is more often the case, they have 
melted away into broad, gently sloping grade plains, which stretch out 
from the escarpment for miles, until at last they merge into the Aubrey 
platform. 
In sharp contrast to the weak Moencopie shales below and the soft 
Painted Desert shales above, the Shinarump stands out firmly as a bench 
and cliff maker. In the eastern part of our area, among the plateaus, it 
forms the flat top of the “ Permian” terrace, and its outlying tables. 
Not uncommonly its edge projects out over the soft shales beneath, like 
an ornamental moulding. Often, where it is the uppermost member re- 
maining, its top is flat and clean; but where it merely flanks the bold 
Kanab escarpment, its platform is banked by landslides from above. 
This is well shown at Rockville, near the Virgin river, where the waste 
of the shales is particularly rapid (Plate 4 B). 
Where the strata have been folded, the Shinarump again is conspicu- 
ous. Between Toquerville and St. George, where a great plunging 
anticline has been unroofed by erosion, the conglomerate forms a cigar- 
