CIRCLE VALLEY— RHYOLITES AT MAEYSVALE. 



213 



the Northern Markdgunt, crowned by the Bear Peak and Little Creek 

 Peak in the background. From Panquitch Canon the stream emerges into 

 Circle Valley, which is much smaller in area but far grander in scenery — 

 indeed, the grandest of the High Plateaus. On the east rises the long pali- 

 sade of the Sevier Plateau 4,300 feet above the river; on the west the 

 wall of the Southern Tushar, which opposite the valley is 4,200 feet above 

 it, and from 5,000 to 6,000 feet above it in its northern and southern exten- 

 sions. The Tushar shows rugged peaks and domes planted upon a colossal 

 wall ; the Sevier Plateau shows a blank wall without the peaks. Very 

 grand and majestic are these mural fronts, stretching away into the dim dis- 

 tance calm, stern, and restful. Yet they fail to impress the beholder with 

 a full realization of their magnitude. This is true of mountains in general, 

 but pre-eminently so of gi'eat cliffs. If one-third of the stuff in the Sevier 

 Plateau, east of Circle Valley, had been used to build a range of 

 lively mountains, they would have seemed grander and possessed what no 

 palisade can ever possess — beauty and animation. It is otherwise with the 

 Tushar. There the great wall has magnified the mountains by giving them 

 a noble sub-structure on which to stand, and the mountains have magnified 

 the wall by giving it something to support. 



Twenty miles south of Circle Valley and just below the hamlet of 

 •Marysvale another considerable ban-ier lies across the valley of the Sevier. 

 It consists of a mass of rhyolitic lavas, which broke out in the valley bot- 

 tom in many eruptions, and now remain as a chaos of tangled sheets 

 stretching from wall to wall. The river has maintained a canon through 

 the mass right at the base of the spurs of the Tushar, whose front here is 

 not mural but mountainous. Emerging from this barrier the river flows 

 unobstructed through its main lower valley between the Pdvant and Sevier 

 Plateau until it darts into the former 70 miles to the northward. 



The valley of the Sevier is due to structure, and owes to erosion only 

 the canons which are cut thi'ough the two barriers of volcanic rocks which 

 have poured across it. The upper valley (Panquitch Valley) lies along the 

 great displacement which has lifted the wall of the Sevier Plateau. Below 

 Panquitch Canon, from Circle Valley to the mouth of Marysvale Canon, 

 the valley platform is a block between two faults, with the Sevier Plateau 



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