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Show AQUARIUS PLATEAU. 139 miles from our point of observation, a great, salient angle projects eastward toward the Henry Mountains, the slopes at its base seeming to continue out a long distance, and form a low, broken ridge between canons running southward, to the Escalante River, and others running northward. Here, if anywhere, this canon region could be crossed, and I decided to go eastward along the slope of the great plateau, to the salient spoken of, and then attempt the passage along the ridge. To carry out this plan would require more supplies and time than were allotted, so I decided to divide my party, sending three men to bring rations from Kanab to the foot of Potato Valley, while I prosecuted the exploration with the remainder. Leaving the foot of Potato Valley, we traveled a little west of north, up a creek called, from the many fine pine trees in its valley, Pine Creek. This stream rises in a semicircular alcove in the eastern wall of the Aquarius Plateau, and flows at the foot of the sandstone cliflf which forms the western wall of the Escalante Basin, till near Potato Creek, when it turns abruptly to the eastward, cuts a deep, narrow canon in the cliff, and unites with the main stream in the heart of the basin. After pursuing this course for twelve miles, and rising about five hundred feet, we turned to the right, climbed 900 feet of steep slope to the crest of a long, narrow, ridge running out from the Aquarius Plateau. On this we traveled toward the north till night, when we camped on the bank of a beautiful birch fringed brook, 2,000 feet above the foot of Potato Valley. The table land, which we called Aquarius Plateau, is about forty miles long, by twenty broad. Its general surface is a level, rocky plain, dotted by numerous lakes. Its eastern side, near the summit, is a steep, and often vertical wall, over which little streams plunge in most beautiful cascades and falls. From the foot of this wall, a long, gentle slope reaches to the level of the Escalante Basin. Lakes dot the upper portion, and, at intervals, cascade brooks make the air musical with running waters. For two days we traveled along this slope, having, all the time, the snow covered crest of the Aquarius Plateau on our left, and the Escalante Basin with its wilderness of dark canons, white capped buttes, and orange cliffs, with intervening miles of naked rock, and loose, drifting sands on our right, |
