PAElA. AMPHITHEATEE. 



253 



From the southern cape of the plateau we look southward over an 

 immense expanse. The Kaibab is in full view, stretching away south- 

 ward until its flat summit and straight palisade is lost in illimitable distance. 

 To the southwest Mount Trumbull is seen nearly a hundred miles away. 

 To the southeast a farrago of cliffs and buttes of strange forms and vivid 

 colors breaks up the monotony of the scene. But the eastern and noilh- 

 eastern view is one which the beholder will not easily forget. It is the 

 great amphitheater of the Pakia.* 



An almost semicircular area, with a chord 30 miles in length, has been 

 excavated into a valley by numberless creeks and brooks, which unite into 

 one stream named the Pari a. This stream is at present a mere thread of 

 water flowing southward to the Colorado, which it reaches at the head of 

 the Marble Canon. During nine months of the year so feeble is the stream 

 that it sinks in the sands before reaching the Colorado, but it is a raging 

 torrent during the months when the snows are melting. The many tribu- 

 taries which ramify in all directions are generally dry during the greater 

 part of the year, but a few of them are perennial. Every one of these 

 little streamlets has cut its canon, and nearly all of them are abrupt and 

 impassible save by very difficult and tortuous trails made by Indians and 

 preserved from obliteration by the few herdsmen who pasture cattle in the 

 vicinity. Yet it seems that at a comparatively late geological epoch the 

 climate may have been much moister than at present, and these many 

 water-ways carried perennial streams. Such a climate in all probability 

 prevailed during the glacial period and during the Miocene age. The 

 amount of erosion which has here been produced is very great. By refer- 

 ence to the stereogranl it Avill be seen that the locus of the Paria Valley is 

 constructed as a great uplift. The strata which are found within its con- 

 fines occupy much higher horizons than their continuations beneath the 

 Kaij^arowits Plateau on the east and the Paunsdgunt Plateau on the west. 

 In these two plateaus the erosion has been small for some reason, while in 

 the Pdria Valley it has been very great, approaching in extent the vast 

 erosion which has taken place to the southward in the Kaibab district. 



* In the pronunciation of this name the vowels have the German sound, and the accent is on the 

 middle syllable (Pah-ri-ah). It is the Ute name for elk. 



