168 EXPLORATION OF THE CANONS OF THE COLORADO. 
of this stairway, the Orange Cliffs, is more than one thousand two hundred 
feet high, and the step itself is two or three score miles in width. The second 
step, the Book Cliffs, is two thousand feet high, or more, and a score of 
miles in width. The third, or upper step, is more than two thousand feet 
high. Passing along this step, for two or three score miles, we reach the 
valley of the Uinta; but this valley is not five or six thousand feet higher 
than the Toom'-pin Wit-near* Tu-weap', for the stairway is tipped backward. 
Climb the Orange Cliffs, 1,200 feet high, and go north to the foot of 
the Book Cliffs, and you have gradually descended, so that at the foot of 
the Book Cliffs you are not more than a hundred feet above the foot of the 
Orange Cliffs In like manner the foot of the Brown Cliffs is but 200 feet 
higher than the foot of the Book Cliffs, and the valley of the Uinta is not 
quite three hundred feet higher than the foot of the Brown Cliffs. 
To go by land from the valley of White Eiver to the Toom'-pin Wu-near' 
Tu-weap'j you must gradually, almost imperceptibly climb as you pass to the 
south, for a distance of forty or fifty miles, until you attain an altitude of 
two thousand five hundred or three thousand feet above the starting point. 
Then you descend from the first terrace, by an abrupt step, to a lower. 
Still continuing to the south, you gradually climb again, until you attain an 
altitude of more than a thousand feet, when you arrive at the brink of 
another cliff, and descend abruptly to the top of the lowest terrace. Still 
extending your travels in the same direction, you climb gradually for a third 
time, until you reach the brink of the third line of cliffs, or the edge of the 
escarpment of the lower terrace, and here you descend by another sudden 
step to the plane of the river, at the foot of Labyrinth Canon. In coming 
down by the river, of course you do not ascend, but you pass these terraces 
along the plane of the river, the upper terrace, through the Canon of Deso 
lation, the middle terrace through Gray Canon, and the third through 
Labyrinth Canon. 
The beds, or series of rocks, through which Labyrinth Canon is cut, 
extend under the beds of Gray Canon, and these run under the beds of the 
Canon of Desolation. At one time the Desolation series and the Gray 
Cafton series extended over the Labyrinth Canon series, but they have been 
washed away. 
