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Show TABLE CLIFF AND KAIP ABO WITS PEAK. 297 Many dikes are also visible around the gorge of Mesa Creek, while none were observed in the bedded lavas farther south. TABLE CLIFF. The southwestern cape of the Aquarius ends at a high pass separating the Escalante drainage from that of the Panquitch Hayfield. This pass is thus in the main divide between the drainage system of the Colorado and of the Great Basin. At this cape the lava-cap of the Aquarius terminates, but beneath it the Tertiary thrusts out a long peninsula to the southward. The altitude of these beds is very nearly 11,000 feet above the sea, and the peninsula which they form is Table Cliff. Upon its summit is an outlying remnant of lava a few hundred feet thick, which was once, no doubt, continuous with the lava-cap of the Aquarius. The table is practically a large butte left by the denudation of the surrounding country. I have explained in the first chapter how the degradation of the Plateau Country has to a great extent proceeded from a number of centers, extending radially outwards, wasting the edges of the strata, partly by direct attack upon the fronts of cliffs, partly by the interlacing of canons, but each series of beds being gradually wasted backwards, and their terminations forming ever-expanding circles facing the center of erosion. The erosion of the Tertiary, which spread from the center now occupied and inclosed by the Circle Cliffs, has met the outward-spreading erosion from a center now occupied by Paria Valley, and the cusp formed by the meeting of the two circles is the locus of Table Cliff. The table is interesting on account of the splendid exposures of the Cretaceous system upon its western and southwestern flanks. While the beds in the mass of the table are nearly horizontal, the ledges of the Cretaceous projecting towards the wrest are turned upwards at a very moderate inclination, and in passing to the floor of Paria Valley we cross the whole Cretaceous S3^stem, of which the thickness here is 5,000 feet. The series consists of heavy members of bright yellow sandstone and gray argillaceous shales. Each member is from 300 to 500 feet in thickness. The cliff sculpture is about as fine as any in the Plateau Country. We have noted its appearance from the western side of Paria Valley at the foot of the Paunsagunt slopes (Chapter XI), and a nearer |