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Show FAULTS AND FOLDS. 187 So we have selected, for purposes of discussion here, six great displacements-the Paria Fold, the Eastern Kaibab Fault, the Western Kaibab Fault, the To-ro'-weap Fault, the Hurricane Ledge Fault, and the Grand Wash Fault. Let us review them in reverse order, and examine the lines of cliffs to which they give rise, and the table lands which they divide. (See bird's-eye view, Figure 72.) We will start at the Grand Wash, half a dozen miles north of the river. Here the summit of the Carboniferous rocks is deeply buried beneath sandstones and shales of later origin. At the start we are but five or six hundred feet above the level of the Colorado, and we climb by a gentle slope several miles in length, until we reach an altitude of six or eight hundred feet above the starting point, and are at the foot of the Grand Wash Cliffs. Now we must climb this great wall, one thousand five hundred or one thousand eight hundred feet high; no easy task, as it is not a mountain slope, up which we can walk, but a wall, broken somewhat with gulches, and set with narrow benches, or shelves, here and there, and up some one of these gulches and along the narrow shelves we pass, until we reach the summit of the first great terrace. Still we go a short distance to the east, and must climb another thousand feet, or more, and we are on the Shi'-wits Plateau This last escarpment of a thousand feet is not due to a fault, but is a line of cliffs formed by erosion. On the plateau there is a dead volcano, and from its crater have poured floods of basalt in great sheets, which now stand as a central and higher table on the plateau. We go on to the east thirty miles. It is not an easy way, but we stop not here to describe it, and we arrive at the foot of the Hurricane Ledge. We have descended a little, for the SM'-wits Plateau inclines, or dips, from its western margin to the foot of this ledge, or line of cliffs. The Hurricane Ledge is more than two thousand feet high, and we have another hard climb. It is related that a storm overtook a party of Mormon officials while attempting to explore a route for a wagon road up a gulch which comes down from the upper country, and hence its name, Hurricane Ledge. It presents a bold, precipitous wall to the west, which forms, along its entire course, an impassable barrier to the traveler, except that here and |
