12 
SURVEY OF THE COLORADO OF THE WEST. 
valley of the Virgeu, and on the northeast by a gentle slope into the 
valley at the foot of Hurricane Ledge. 
The Colorado Plateau lies to the south of the Grand Canon ; it is 
bounded on the north by this great gorge, on the east by an escarp- 
ment which faces the Little Colorado, and on the west and southwest 
by an escarpment which has received the name of Aubrey Cliffs ; the 
southeastern extension is to me unknown. “VVe coniine this name to 
this single plateau, rather than to the more extended but undefined 
country to which it had been previously assigned. The outlines and 
altitudes of these plateaus have all been traced and mapped. 
LINES OF CLIFFS. 
Perhaps the most wonderful of the topographic features of this coun- 
try are the lines of cliffs, escarpments of rock, separating upper from 
lower regions by bold, often vertical and impassable barriers, hundreds 
or thousands of feet high, and scores or hundreds of miles in length. 
These are of two classes, escarpments of erosion, presenting lines of 
cliffs, usually having an easterly and westerly trend, and walls standing 
along the lines of faults, having a northerly and southerly direction. 
Of the first class I will enumerate the following : 
The Brown Cliffs, the southern escarpments of the Ta-va'-puts Pla- 
teau; the Book Cliffs bounding Gunnison Plateau on the south; the 
latter is a great escarpment of blue shales capped with gray and buff* 
sandstoiies and limestones. Standing below, an extensive storm-carved 
facade is presented, with giant forms of rocks, elaborately sculptured by 
the rain, and colored in beautiful and delicate tints. 
The Orange Cliffs are a broken escarpment which commences at the 
foot of the Sierra La Sal on the eastern side of Grand River, passes the 
Grand, then crosses Green River, and then turns to a southwesterly 
direction, and runs parallel to the Colorado River for fifty miles, and 
then turns again to the southeast and crosses the Colorado, terminating 
in the slope of the Sierra La Sal, scores of miles south of the initial 
point. Thus the head of the Colorado, the junction of the Grand and 
Green, is encompassed by a towering wall — the Sierra La Sal on the 
east, on the north, west, and south the Orange Cliffs. The Indian 
name for this basin is Tum'-pin-wu-neir'-tu-wip, the Land of Standing 
Rocks. 
But es, towers, pinnacles, thousands and tens of thousands strange 
forms of rocks, naked rock of many different colors, are here seen ; so 
that before we had learned the Indian name, we thought of calling it 
the Stone Forest, or Painted Stone Forest ; and these rocks are not 
fragments or piles or irregular masses, but standing forms, carved by 
the rain drops from the solid, massive beds. Weird, strange, and grand 
is the Tum'-pin-wu-nieF-tu-wip. 
The Wasatch Cliffs form the eastern boundary of the Wasatch Plateau 
and separate it from the district of country about the headwaters of 
