130 GRAND CANON DISTRICT. 



dry. I have known the temperature of the air to be 110° at midday, fall 

 ing to 51° at midnight, without any general atmospheric disturbance or 

 change except that which is due to nocturnal radiation. Upon the open 

 desert the air is almost always still both by day and night. Rarely do 

 the high winds blow over it in summer, and even strong breezes are an 

 common except in the vicinity of great cliffs. At night the stillness is 

 profound, and unless there is water or green vegetation hard by even the 

 chirping of insects is unheard. The only sound which breaks upon the 

 ear is the howling of the wolves that prowl about the camp and follow 

 the tracks of the animals. 



The hours roll quickly past as we move onward in the darkness. At 

 length when the stars betoken the approach of midnight we halt, strip 

 off the packs and saddles, hobble the animals and turn them loose to 

 browse upon the scanty herbage. As the sun rises we are once more on 

 the road. For ten miles from Kanab the trail descends by a hardly 

 perceptible grade. Thence it ascends gradually at a rate of about 150 

 feet to the mile. From the fifteenth to the twenty-third mile it lies 

 in shallow ravines but at last emerges upon more open ground. As we 

 look back towards the north one of the grand spectacles of the Plateau 

 country is disclosed to us. It is a view of the great cliffs which bound 

 the southern terraces of the High Plateaus rising one above another. 

 Nearly 10,000 feet of strata are exposed edgewise and occupy a line of 

 frontage from 50 to GO miles in length. It includes the stratigraphic 

 series from the base of the Permian to the summit of the Lower Eocene. 

 The view of the terraces from the north, from the brink of the Marka- 

 gunt or Paunsagunt, is of a very different character from this. There 

 we see only their sloping summits with now and then a fragment of a 

 mural front swung into view obliquely by the meandering course of the 

 line of escarpment. Here the general line of frontage faces us while t he 

 terrace platforms are invisible. The view is a distant one but it requires- 

 great distance to bring into the field of vision an exposure so vast. At 

 their nearest points the Permian is 15 miles away, the Trias 20, the Jura 

 35, and the Eocene more than 50. It should be observed that we are 

 looking across the broad depression or concavity before spoken of, and 

 that there is a gentle slope downwards for 15 miles to the base of the 

 Permian, which lies 1,900 feet below us. Notwithstanding the distance 

 there is no difficulty in distinguishing the different formations, and there 

 would have been none even if we had never before seen the terraces, pro- 

 vided wo had become familiar with their several aspects elsewhere; so 

 strongly individualized are their colors and their sculptural forms. The 

 Cretaceous alone is obscure, for in the portions of the terraces now in 

 sight it does not form cliffs but breaks down in long slopes covered with 

 soil and debris. If we were a few miles further west the Cretaceous 

 cliffs of the Paria amphitheater would be visible and be as easily deter- 

 mined as the others, but here the Kaibab hides them. Although nearly 

 10,000 feet of strata are disclosed the summit of the Eocene lies only 



