blo-building peoples--of what stock is not known.
The Tavaputs Plateau is one of the stupendous features of this country.
On the west it merges into the Wasatch Mountains; on the north it
descends by wooded slopes into the Uinta Valley. Its summit is
forest-clad and among the forests are many beautiful parks. On the south
it ends in a great escarpment which descends into Castle Valley. This
southern escarpment presents one of the most wonderful facades of the
world. It is from 2,000 to 4,000 feet high. The descent is not made by
one bold step, for it is cut by canyons and cliffs. It is a zone several
miles in width which is a vast labyrinth of canyons, cliffs, buttes,
pinnacles, minarets, and detached rocks of Cyclopean magnitude, the
whole destitute of soil and vegetation, colored in many brilliant tones
and tints, and carved in many weird forms,--a land of desolation,
dedicated forever to the geologist and the artist, where civilization
can find no resting-place.
Then comes Castle Valley, to describe which is to beggar language and
pall imagination. On the north is the Tavaputs; on the west is the
Wasatch Plateau, which lies to the south of the Wasatch Mountains and is
here the west boundary of the Plateau Province; on the south are
indescribable mesas and mountains; on the east is Grand River, a placid
stream meandering through a valley of meadows. Within these boundaries
there is a landscape of gigantic rock forms, interrupted here and there
by bad-land hills, dominated with the towering cliffs of Tavaputs, the
bold escarpment of the Wasatch Plateau, and the volcanic peaks of the
Henry Mountains on the south. It is a vast forest of rock forms, and in
its midst is San Rafael Swell, an elevation crowned with still more
gigantic rock forms. Among the rocks pools and lakelets are found, and
little streams run in canyons that seem like chasms cleft to nadir hell.
San Rafael River and Fremont River drain this Castle land, heading in
the Wasatch Plateau and flowing into the Grand River. Along these
streams a few narrow canyon valleys are found, and in them Ute Indians
make their winter homes. The bad lands are filled with agates, jaspers,
and carnelians, which are gathered by the Indians and fashioned into
arrowheads and knives; along the foot of the canyon cliffs workshops can
be discovered that have been occupied by generations from a time in the
long past, and the chips of these workshops pave the valleys. South of
t
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