ough the backbone of the Buckskin mountains, which are not a range
of peaks but a broad plateau of solid rock. Into this rock the canon
is sunk more than a mile deep, from six to eighteen miles wide and over
two hundred miles long.

In order to make the theory of water erosion tenable it is assumed that
the Colorado river started in its incipiency like any other river.
After a time the river bed began to rise and was gradually pushed up
more and more by some unknown subterranean force as the water cut
deeper and deeper into the rock until the Grand Canon was formed.

Captain Hance has a theory that the canon originated in an underground
stream which tunneled until it cut its way through to the surface. As
improbable as is this theory it is as plausible as the erosion theory,
but both theories appear to be equally absurd.

At some remote period of time the entire southwest was rent and torn by
an awful cataclysm which caused numerous fissures and seams to appear
all over the country. The force that did the work had its origin in
the earth and acted by producing lateral displacement rather than
direct upheaval. Whenever that event occurred the fracture which marks
the course of the Grand Canon was made and, breaking through the
enclosing wall of the Great Basin, set free the waters of an inland
sea. What the seismic force began the flood of liberated water helped
to finish, and there was born the greatest natural wonder of the known
world.

There are canons all over Arizona and the southwest that resemble the
Grand Canon, except that they were made on a smaller scale. Many of
them are perfectly dry and apparently never contained any running
water. They are all so much alike that they were evidently made at the
same time and by the same cause. Walnut Canon and Canon Diablo are
familiar examples of canon formation.

The rocks in the canons do not stand on end, but lie in horizontal
strata and show but little dip anywhere. Indeed, the rocks lie so
plumb in many places that they resemble the most perfect masonry.

The rim rock of the Mogollon Mesa is of the same character as the walls
of the Grand Canon and is an important part of the canon system. It is
almost a perpendicular cliff from one to three thousand feet high which
extends from east to west across central Arizona and divides the great
northern plateau from the southern valleys. It is one side of an
immense vault or canon wall whose mate has been los