NAVAJO MOUNTAIN— KAIPAROWITS CLIFF. 291 



it, for 60 miles, the country is dissected by a net-work of deep, narrow 

 chasms, among which are trails of a most intricate and difficult nature, 

 known at present only to Indians. The mountain is inhabited by a band 

 of renegade Indians, chiefly Navajos, who are very jealous of all intrusion 

 into their fastnesses, and great caution is requisite when venturning near 

 their retreat. 



Due northward rises the great wall of the Kaiparowits Plateau. This 

 giant cliff is GO miles in length and nearly 2,000 feet high. Throughout 

 its course it wavers but little from a straight line. Almost all the great 

 cliffs of the Plateau Country are very sinuous, being in fact a series of pro- 

 montories, separated by deep bays, like the lobes of a "digitate" leaf. 

 The cause is readily discerned The bays are produced by the widening 

 of the canons, which, in a great majority of cases, emerge from the cliffs 

 and seldom run down into them. Erosion thus not only saps the main 

 front of the cliff, but attacks it through these side-cuts. But the Kaiparo- 

 wits cliff has only a single carlon emerging from it, and this is near the 

 northern end. From the very crest-line the drainage is to the southwest, 

 while the cliff faces northeast, and thus the eroding agents can attack it 

 onlv in front. Since the strata are homogeneous in their horizontal exten- 

 sions, and heterogeneous vertically, the effect of erosion has obviously been 

 to produce a straight wall, broken only at the point where the single canon 

 emerges from it. The beds of which the Kaiparowits is composed are 

 Middle Cretaceous. We can see, from our standpoint, their characteristic 

 colors, which present a very striking appearance. Broad bands of bright 

 yellow sandstone, alternating with the dark gray of the argillaceous shales, 

 produce a contrast which is not only visible, but even emphatic, at a dis- 

 tance of 60 miles. These belts of light and shade are 300 to 400 feet 

 thick, and apparently quite horizontal. 



To the southwest rise Kaiparowits Peak and Table Cliff, of which 

 more will be said hereafter. Between those points and our own position is 

 a great depressed area, of which the lowest part is Potato Valley. The 

 altitude of its floor is about 5,600 feet above the sea. Towards it conver- 

 ges the drainage of all the highlands lying north, west, and southwest, and 

 the confluence of the streams from those directions forms the Escalante 



