194 EXPLOITATION OF THE CANONS OF THE COLORADO. 
there, and with them spell the words, and read, in a slow and imperfect 
way, but still so as to understand a little, the story of creation. 
These rust colored shelves have above them soft shales, of a lemon 
color, and in ascending the wall we climb them by passing up a steep slope, 
curiously carved by innumerable rainy-day rills. Above these we find 
homogeneous limestone a thousand feet in thickness, standing in vertical 
cliffs. On top of this great bed we find soft sandstones, so washed away 
as to leave comparatively flat spaces of solid rock above a bench on which 
we can walk on the side of the Grand Canon, more than four thousand feet 
above the river. In this part ot its course the channel is very tortuous. 
Many streams he'ad in the Kaibab Plateau, to the north, and the Coanini 
Plateau, to the south, and run down into the Grand Canon ; and these have 
their lateral canons, and a third and fourth system of side gulches are seen, 
all having winding ways. Now suppose that we start on this bench, where 
the Grand Canon cuts through the second of the Eastern Kaibab Faults, 
and follow it down the canon until we come to the Western Kaibab .Fault. 
We start on the north side of the river, and the Kaibab Plateau is on our 
right. At once we walk around a great amphitheater, the head of a side 
gulch, and then another, and another, until we come to a lateral canon 
coming down the Kaibab, which has its beginning many miles back. Now 
we must head this. In doing so we must walk around the brink of a great 
amphitheater, the head of a side gulch, then another, and still another, until 
we come to a side caiion lateral to the one we are attempting to head, and 
around it we must go. In doing so, still following the bench on the sum 
mit of the limestone, we pass around, in gentle curves, by many of these 
amphitheaters, and so on we go, everywhere traveling in half circles, which 
are arranged about side canons. At last we head the first side canon, and 
return to the brink of the Grand Canon, at a point only a mile or two to the 
west of where we started, and so head side caiions with side canons, all set 
with amphitheaters, and travel day by day, and must walk hundreds of 
miles to reach the western edge of the Kaibab Plateau, not more than thirty 
miles in a direct line from where we started. So this great bed of rock, a 
thousand feet in thickness, is elaborately carved into a series of amphi 
theaters. 
