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Show NAVAJO MOUNTAINâ€" KAIPAEOWITS CLIFF. 291 it, for 60 miles, the country is dissected by a net-work of deep, narrow chasms, among which are trails of a most intricate and difficult nature, known at present only to Indians. The mountain is inhabited by a band of renegade Indians, chiefly Navajos, who are very jealous of all intrusion into their fastnesses, and great caution is requsite when venturning near their retreat. Due northward rises the great wall of the Kaiparowits Plateau. This giant cliff is 60 miles in length and nearly 2,000 feet high. Throughout its course it wavers but little from a straight line. Almost all the great cliffs of the Plateau Country are very sinuous, being in fact a series of promontories, separated by deep bays, like the lobes of a "digitate" leaf. The cause is readily discerned The bays are produced by the widening of the canons, which, in a great majority of cases, emerge from the cliffs and seldom run down into them. Erosion thus not only saps the main front of the cliff, but attacks it through these side-cuts. But the Kaiparowits cliff has only a single canon emerging from it, and this is near the northern end. From the very crest-line the drainage is to the southwest, while the cliff faces northeast, and thus the eroding agents can attack it only in front. Since the strata are homogeneous in their horizontal extensions, and heterogeneous vertically, the effect of erosion has obviously been to produce a straight wall, broken only at the point where the single canon emerges from it. The beds of which the Kaiparowits is composed are Middle Cretaceous. We can see, from our standpoint, their characteristic colors, which present a very striking appearance. Broad bands of bright yellow sandstone, alternating with the dark gray of the argillaceous shales, produce a contrast which is not only visible, but even emphatic, at a distance of 60 miles. These belts of light and shade are 300 to 400 feet thick, and apparently quite horizontal. To the southwest rise Kaiparowits Peak and Table Cliff, of which more will be said hereafter. Between those points and our own position is a great depressed area, of which the lowest part is Potato Valley. The altitude of its floor is about 5,600 feet above the sea. Towards it converges the drainage of all the highlands lying north, west, and southwest, and the confluence of the streams from those directions forms the Escalante |