154 EXPLORATION OF THE CANONS OF THE COLORADO. 
folding began we have reason to believe that the general surface of this 
country was but slightly above that general standard of comparison. 
Then there were down-turned as well as up-turned wrinkles, or, as the 
geologist would say, there were synclinal as well as anticlinal folds. Had 
there been no degradation of the fold, there would have been a bed of rock 
turned over its summit twenty-four thousand feet above the present level of 
the river. Now that bed is gone from the mountains, yet it can be seen turned 
up on edge against the flanks of the mountains, dipping under the beds of 
rocks found still farther out from the range. Follow it down, and doubtless 
we could trace it to a depth much below the level of the sea. While the folds 
were forming, the upturned flexures were cut down, and the troughs in the 
down-turned flexures were filled up, and we have more than eight thousand 
feet of these later sediments to the. north of the Uinta Mountains. 
It will thus be seen that the upheaval was not marked by a great con 
vulsion, for the lifting of the rocks was so slow that the rains removed the 
sandstones almost as fast as they came up. The mountains were not thrust 
up as peaks, but a great block was slowly lifted, and from this the mount 
ains were carved by the clouds patient artists, who take what time may be 
necessary for their work. 
We speak of mountains forming clouds about their tops; the clouds 
have formed the mountains. Lift a district of granite, or marble, into their 
region, and they gather about it, and hurl their storms against it, beating 
the rocks into sands, and then they carry them out into the sea, carving out 
caiions, gulchee, and valleys, and leaving plateaus and mountains embossed 
on the surface. 
Instead of having a rounded billow, we have an irregular table, with 
beds dipping to the north, on the north side of the axis, and to the south, on 
the south side, cnnd in passing over the truncated fold we pass over their 
upturned edges. 
Go out on the flank of the fold, and find the bed of rock which would 
form the summit of the great wrinkle, had there been no erosion, and there 
sink a shaft 24,000 feet, arid you will be able to study a certain succession 
of beds of sandstones, shales, and limestones. Go two or three miles farther 
from the mountains, and sink a shaft; the first eight thousand feet or more 
