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Show PABf A. AMPHITHEATEE. 253 From the southern cape of the plateau we look southward over an immense expanse. The Kaibab is in full view, stretching away southward until its flat summit and straight palisade is lost in illimitable distance. To the southwest Mount Trumbull is seen nearly a hundred miles away. To the southeast a farrago of cliffs and buttes of strange forms and vivid colors breaks up the monotony of the scene. But the eastern and northeastern view is one which the beholder will not easily forget. It is the great amphitheater of the Paria.* An almost semicircular area, with a chord 30 miles in length, has been excavated into a valley by numberless creeks and brooks, which unite into one stream named the Paria. This stream is at present a mere thread of w^ater flowing southward to the Colorado, which it reaches at the head of the Marble Canon. During nine months of the year so feeble is the stream that it sinks in the sands before reaching the Colorado, but it is a raging torrent during the months when the snows are melting. The many tributaries which ramify in all directions are generally dry during the greater part of the year, but a few of them are perennial. Every one of these little streamlets has cut its canon, and nearly all of them are abrupt and impassible save by very difficult and tortuous trails made by Indians and preserved from obliteration by the few herdsmen who pasture cattle in the vicinity. Yet it seems that at a comparatively late geological epoch the climate may have been much moister than at present, and these many water-ways carried perennial streams. Such a climate in all probability prevailed during the glacial period and during the Miocene age. The amount of erosion which has here been produced is very great. By reference to the stereogram it will be seen that the locus of the Paria Valley is constructed as a great uplift. The strata which are found within its confines occupy much higher horizons than their continuations beneath the Kaiparowits Plateau on the east and the Paunsagunt Plateau on the west. In these two plateaus the erosion has been small for some reason, while in the Paria Valley it has been very great, approaching in extent the vast erosion which has taken place to the southward in the Kaibab district. * In the pronunciation of this name the vowels have the German sound, and the accent is on the middle syllable (Pah-ri-ah). It is the Ute name for elk. |