DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTE. 



73 



one sees to-day is the deep, narrow cut it lias 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, i5, 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 do when k is working on highly contorted rocks like gneiss 

 and cutting downward only, with little or no broadening. 



The view from the top of the Eoyal 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 

 physiogi"aphy 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 m the 

 open-top car is prepared to see and enjoj' 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 

 geologist several interesting aspects that 

 have a bearing on its history or mode 

 of origin and 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 

 that occupies it, but not all rivers, 

 even in mountain regions, have carved 

 so deeply, so some special condition 

 here must have made it capable of 

 producing so immense a gorge. The 

 condition was either an uplift of the 

 land or an increase 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- 

 sume that 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 



its lower course, and the cutting pro- 

 gresses headward, but no matter how 

 the cutting took place, the important 

 fact is that the stream cuts its way 

 slowly but surely into the surface of 

 the land, and thus the bends and me- 

 anders that characterized the stream 

 when it was flowing on top of what is 

 now the plateau are perpetuated in the 

 canyon. Cutting has not ceased in 

 this interesting canyon but is still 

 going on. The stream still carries sand 

 and in times of flood great boulders, 

 which scratch and grind the rocks over 

 which it flows. To-day it is able to 

 remove all these fragments of rock and 

 its channel is being deepened, but 

 when its grade becomes so flat that 

 it is unable to carry the sand tlie cut- 

 ting will cease and the stream may 

 even fill its bed instead of cutting it 

 deeper. 



