180 EXPLORATION OF THE CANONS OF THE COLOEADO. 
Other interesting features of the landscape are found in the great monu 
ments and buttes that are scattered here and there, attesting to a former 
extension of the beds seen in the more distant cliffs. Of the cliffs more will 
be said hereafter. 
Glen Canon is the channel which the Colorado River has cut for 
itself through beds of red and orange sandstones. Its head is at the mouth 
of the Dirty Devil, and its foot at the mouth of the Paria. It termi 
nates abruptly below by an escarpment which we have called the "Vermil 
ion Cliffs." Along this irregular line, extending from east to west across the 
Colorado, and far back on either side, the general surface of the country 
suddenly drops down. 
MARBLE CANON. 
The escarpment, which we call the " Vermilion Cliffs," at the foot of 
Glen Canon, exposes the same beds as are seen in the face of the Orange 
Cliffs, at the foot of Labyrinth Canon. It will be remembered that the beds 
exposed in the Terrace Canons dip to the north. Between the Orange Cliffs 
and the Vermilion Cliffs the strata are variously dipped by monoclinal folds, 
having their axes in a northerly and southerly direction, and the red beds 
are at about the same altitude above the sea at the two points. The Ver 
milion Cliffs which face the south form a deep, re-entering angle at the mouth 
of the Paria. On the east side of the Colorado, the line stretches to the 
southeast for many miles; on the west side, it extends, in a southwesterly 
direction, about fifteen miles, then turns west, and, at last, to the northwest. 
The general northerly dip is again observed from the mouth of the Paria to 
the mouth of the Colorado Chiquito. 
The general surface of the country between the two points is the sum 
mit of the Carboniferous formation. At the mouth of the Paria this is at 
the water's edge; at the mouth of the Colorado Chiquito it is 3,800 feet 
above the river. The fall of the river, in the same distance, is about six 
hundred feet, so that the whole dip of the rock between the two points is 
about three thousand two hundred feet. The distance, by river, is sixty five 
miles; in a direct line, twenty miles less. So we have a dip of the formation 
of 3,200 feet in forty five miles, or about seventy feet to a mile. 
