BUTTON. 



THE VERMILION CLIFFS. 83 



derful colors predominate. Lime isfoimcl in these rocks, and in notable 

 quantity, but it is almost always in the form of gypsum or selenite. No 

 fossils in these parts have yet been found which are of paleontologies! 

 value; but fish-scales, and fragments of bony scutes are sometimes ob- 

 tained, which are useless for the purposes of the geologist. In the lower 

 shales we find a great abundance of fossil trees completely silicified 

 and several bulky layers are composed very largely of their fragments. 

 The Trias makes its appearance upon the outermost western flank of 

 the Markagunt, a little north of the Mormon town Cedar, rising by a 

 fault out of the valley alluvium. With a constantly expanding exposure, 

 it extends southward along the west flank of the Markagunt and along 

 the upthrow of the Eurricane fault, until the whole of its mass comes to 

 the surface; then broadening out into a wide terrace, it sweeps around 

 the southwestern limit of the Colob and over into the valley of the Vir- 

 gen, where it breaks into cliifs, temples, towers, and buttes of ineffable 

 splendor and beauty. Thence, with a still wider terrace, bounded by a 

 giant wall, it stretches to the southeast as far as Pipe Spring. Here is 

 its southernmost promontory, from which its front trends away north- 

 east and east in proportions diminished somewhat, but still imposing, 

 as far as the Paria River. Thus far the distance is more than 120 miles, 

 in which the sinuosities of the front are not reckoned. Throughout this 

 entire sweep it presents to the southward a majestic wall richly sculp- 

 tured and blazing with gorgeous colors. The cliff line is very tortuous, 

 advancing in promontories, with intervening bays and broad canon val- 

 leys setting far back into the terrace, and resembling a long stretch of 

 coast-line gashed with fiords. Perhaps also the contour of a maple-leaf 

 may be a suggestive analogy. The altitudes of the cliffs are greatest in 

 t heir western portions, for there we find greater thickness of strata. They 

 often exceed 2,000 feet, while in the portion extending from Pipe Spring 

 to the Paria the altitude ranges from 1,000 to 1,400 feet. 



THE VERMILION CLIFFS. 



To this great wall, terminating the Triassic terrace and stretching 

 from the Hurricane Ledge to the Paria, Powell has given the name of 

 The Vermilion Cliffs. Their great altitude, the remarkable length of 

 their line of frontage, the persistence with which their proportions 

 are sustained throughout the entire interval, their ornate sculpture and 

 rich coloring, might justify very exalted language of description. But 

 to the southward, just where the desert surface dips downward beneath 

 the horizon, are those supreme walls of the Grand Canon, which we must 

 hereafter behold and vainly strive to describe; and however worthy of 

 admiration the Vermilion Cliffs may be we must be frugal of adjectives, 

 lest in the chapters to be written we And their force and meaning ex- 



