C IT A P T E R V . 



Till] TOROWEAP AND UINKAHET. 



The present chapter will contain an account of a journey from the 

 village Kanab to the Toroweap Valley, and a description of the middle 

 portion of the Grand Canon; also of the Uinkaret Plateau. Kanab is the 

 usual rallying place and base of operations of the survey in these parts, 

 being located on the only living stream between the Virgen and the 

 Paria. 



The first stage of the journey from Kanab to Pipe Spring is an easy 

 one. It leads southwestward to a gap cut through the low Permian 

 terrace, and out into the open desert beyond. The road, well traveled 

 and easy, then turns westward and at length reaches the spring twenty 

 miles from Kanab. Pipe Spring is situated at the foot of the southern- 

 most promontory of the Vermilion Cliffs, and is famous throughout 

 Southern Utah as a watering place. Its How is copious and its water 

 is the purest and best throughout that desolate region. Ten years ago 

 the deserl spaces outspreading to the southward were covered with 

 abundant grasses, affording ricli pasturage to horses and cattle. To- 

 day hardly a blade of grass is to be found within ten miles of the spring, 

 unless upon the crags and mesas of the Vermilion Cliffs behind it. The 

 horses and cattle have disappeared, and the bones of many of the latter 

 are bleached upon the plains in front of it. The cause of the failure of 

 pasturage is twofold. There is little doubt that during the last ten or 

 twelve years the climate of the surrounding country has grown more 

 arid. The occasional summer showers which kept the grasses alive 

 seldom come now, and through the long summer and autumn droughts 

 the grasses perished even to their roots before they had time to seed. 

 All of them belong to varieties which reproduce from seed, and whose 

 loots live but three or four years. Even if there had been no drought 

 the feeding of cattle would have impoverished and perhaps wholly de- 

 stroyed the grass by cropping it clean before the seeds were mature, as 

 has been the case very generally throughout Utah and Nevada. 



Northeastward the Vermilion Cliffs extend in endless perspective to- 

 wards Kanab, and beyond to the Paria. Northwestward, with growing 

 magnitude, they extend towards the Virgen, ever forming a mighty 

 background to the picture. To the southward stretches the desert, 

 blank, lifeless, and as expressionless as the sea. For five or six miles 

 south of the Pipe Spring promontory there is a gentle descending slope, 

 and thence onward the surface feebly ascends through a distance of 

 lot 



