r energies and powers of invention were dedicated to discover
and explore deeper and more permanent depositions, along the western
slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the Andes of the Western Territories, and
which originally were without doubt several miles higher than they are at
the present time--probably 20,000 feet above the sea-level--and of which,
or whatever superior elevation they formerly had, the greater portion of
it has already been removed, by the continuous natural action of
centuries, to form there, as elsewhere, the plains and prairies of the
earth, burying and diverting by the mutation the ancient river system,
whose sources of supply were consequently extinguished by the removal of
these altitudes. These denudations and subsequent depositions have been
caused by alternations of temperature and combined action of air, water,
and time since the creation of the world; and powerful demonstrations of
these transformations instruct us in all directions, if we care to observe
them. Thus in "Little Cottonwood" ravine, in the Wahsatch range of
mountains in Utah Territory, lie isolated in the center of the valley huge
masses of metamorphic granite, some blocks of which weigh individually
thousands of tons, and were dislodged from the hills--which on either side
are of limestone formation--with no visible granite in them, having been
undermined by the removal of their pulverized basis by denudation, and
which is the material now forming the tablelands, the foundation, of Salt
Lake City. The blocks of granite, having alone resisted the atmospheric
changes, were precipitated into the valley beneath, and the Mormons are
now constructing their cathedral church from these granitic remains.

The melting of the snow which formerly capped all these ranges of
mountains furnished the water that once flowed in the extinguished
channels of ancient rivers, and whose now diverted waters were also the
powerful agent to assist in causing these marvelous alternations; and by
the means of hydraulic mining we can advance our feeble knowledge on the
subject.

These mighty changes have gradually been accomplished, and the accumulated
denudations of the mineral zones have defended themselves by strata of
crystallized silicates of quartz of various thicknesses, and thus in
places beneath such system of defense, or by their own concretion, have
preserved in many localities a thickness of from 500 to 600 feet of
conglomerate, but without this