DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTER. 13 
one sees to-day is the deep, narrow cut it has thus made. The canyon 
seems no wider than the stream that carved it. In places the walls 
overhang, and one must have steady nerves to stand firmly on the 
edge and look without dizziness down at a point 1,100 feet below. 
The banding of the granite and the many dikes and veins that 
cut it, as shown in Plate XXXIV, B, give a variety of attractive 
color effects. In places the soft layers have worn away until there 
are deep recesses; in others the massive rock has so well resisted the 
scouring action of the stream that the walls are vertical or even 
overhang. 
On the whole, the canyon shows impressively what an active stream 
can cdo when it is working on highly contorted rocks like eas 
and cutting downward only, with little or no broadening. 
The view from the top of the Royal Gorge will well repay one 
who is interested in the canyon as a scenic feature for the trouble 
he takes to reach it, and it furnishes the student of geology or 
physiography an almost ideal example of a newly cut gorge.** 
MAIN LINE OF RAILROAD FROM CANON CITY TO 
SALIDA. 
As the train leaves the station at Canon City the traveler in the 
open-top car is prepared to see and enjoy to the utmost the magnifi- 
cent spectacle of the Royal Gorge. This gorge, however, forms only 
a small part, as measured in miles, of the grand canyon of the 
Arkansas, which stretches from a point a mile west of Canon City 
“The Royal Gorge presents to the | its lower course, and the cutting pro- 
have a bearing on its history or mode 
of origin ahd also on the history of 
other features in this region. The 
canyon, as has already been stated, 
was carved in the rocks by the river 
when it was flowing on top of what is 
peat occupies it, but not all rivers, 
_ ¥en in mountain regions, have carved | now the plateau are perpetuated in the 
So deeply, so some special condition | canyon. Cutting has not ceased in 
here must have made it capable of | this yrs mie a is still 
producing 
condition was either an uplift of the 
land or an inerease in the volume of 
the river, which greatly increased its 
cutting power, but as there are other 
evidences of uplift it is safe to as- 
t the cutting of the Royal 
Gorge was made possible by a general 
uplift of the region. A stream that is 
being uplifted, or rejuvenated, as the 
geologist would say, begins cutting in 
going on. Thes ill carries sand 
and in times a oars iat boulders, 
which scratch and grind the rocks over 
which it flows. To-day it is able to 
it is unable to carry the sand eigphanel 
ting will cease and the stream may 
even fill its bed instead of eutting eel 
deeper. 
