34 OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



hundred miles away. It is tradition that Indian tribes warred for 

 their possession but that finally a truce was made which enabled all 

 tribes to avail alike of their waters. 



Government analyses of the waters disclose more than twenty 

 chemical constituents, but it is not these nor their combination to 

 which is principally attributed the water's unquestioned virtue in 

 many diseased conditions, but to their remarkable radioactivity. The 

 Department of the Interior will send full information to inquirers. 



XI. 

 THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO 



(National Monument Administered by the Department of Agriculture) 



THE rain falling in the plowed field forms rivulets in the fur- 

 rows. The rivulets unite in a muddy torrent in the roadside 

 gutter. With succeeding showers the gutter wears an everdeep- 

 ening channel in the soft soil. With the passing season the 

 gutter becomes a gully. Here and there, in places, its banks under- 

 mine and fall in. Here and there the rivulets from the field wear 

 tiny tributary gullies. Between the breaks in the banks and the 

 tributaries, irregular masses of earth remain standing, sometimes 

 resembling mimic cliffs, sometimes washed and worn into mimic 

 peaks and spires. 



Such roadside erosion is familiar to us all. A hundred times we 

 have idly noted the fantastic water-carved walls and minaretted 

 slopes of these ditches. But seldom, perhaps, have we realized that 

 the muddy roadside ditch and the world famous Grand Canyon of the 

 Colorado are, from Nature's standpoint, identical; that they differ 

 only in soil and size. 



The arid States of our great southwest constitute an enormous 

 plateau or table land from four to eight thousand feet above sea level. 

 It is plateau of sun-baked conglomerate and loose soils from which 

 emerge occasional mountain masses of more or less solid rock. Rain 

 seldom falls, but in whiter the snows He heavy in the mountains. In 

 the spring the snows melt and torrents of water wear temporary 

 beds in the loose soils. Rivers are few and small. Some lose them- 

 selves in the drying sands. Others gather into a few desert water 

 systems. The largest of these is that which, in its lower courses, 

 bears the name of the Colorado River. 



In ages before history the Colorado River probably flowed upon 

 the surface of this lofty table land. But, like the roadside ditch, it 

 gradually wore an ever-deepening channel. In time, as with the 

 roadside ditch, the banks caved in and the current carried the soil 

 away. Seismic disturbances may have helped. The ever busy 

 chisels of the untiring winds have carved and polished through 

 untold centuries. 



