DAVIS: THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO. 115 
Tur Rock Series. — The following figure of the rock series is here 
introduced for the convenience of the reader. It is compiled from 
reports by Dutton (a, c) and Walcott (d, p. 50), to which the brief 
article by Frech may be taken as supplementary.' 
The strata exposed in the canyon walls reach up to the top of the 
Aubrey ; those in the terraces of the High plateaus reach down nearly 
to the base of the Trias. The weak beds of the lower Trias and the 
Permian, with the resistant Shinarump sandstone between them, occupy 
the border between the base of the great terraces and the stripped sur- 
face of the upper Aubrey which extends over so large an area of the 
plateaus adjoining the Grand canyon. ; 
Loca Names, Maps, ero. — Our habit of accenting the antepenul- 
timate syllable of Indian words, whose original accent is on the penult, 
leads to a mispronunciation of a number of names for local features 
adopted by Powell, Dutton, and others in the Grand canyon district. 
The following list compiled from various sources ‘may serve a useful 
purpose in preserving something of the original sound of these words, 
as well as in giving their meaning, along with that of some English 
names : — 
Aubrey: The name of an army officer, given to a valley southeast of 
the Shivwits canyon, and extended by Gilbert to the line of cliffs north 
of the valley and to the upper Carboniferous strata in the cliffs 
(a p.vl77): 
Coconino: (Variously spelled Cocanini, Coanini, etc.). Name of a 
forested plateau south of the Kaibab (Merriam, p. 35). 
Grand Wash: “In this wide valley are several lines of drainage, of 
which the main one... is called the ‘ grand wash.’ These washes gen- 
erally have the cafion form — flat, gravelly bottoms, sloping talus, and 
steep escarpment above” (Marvine, p. 196). The same name is applied 
1 The name, Vishnu, given to a spur on the Kaibab wall by Dutton (c, p. 148) 
and applied to the crystalline schists in the bottom of the canyon by Walcott 
(d, p. 50), is to be regretted as out of place in the occidental world. Unkar and 
Chuar, as subdivisions of the Grand canyon series, Shinarump as a dividing mem- 
ber between the palzozoic and mesozoic series, Kaibab, Kanab, and the rest for the 
blocked plateaus, Toroweap and Paunsagunt for valleys, have much local flavor, 
however barbarous and ungraceful they may sound to our ears, But Shiva’s and 
Vishnu’s temples as names for pinnacled spurs of the Kaibab in the canyon wall, 
and Vishnu as a name for the fundamental rocks, buried by the plateau-making 
strata, are unnaturalized foreigners. The Vishnu schists in the desert bottom of 
the Grand canyon are as inappropriately named as Diana’s baths in the cold White 
mountains of New Hampshire. 
