The Grand Canyon of the Colorado.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 916, 20 September 1889, Page 8

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado.

This remarkable phenomenon of nature extends over two hundred miles along the Colorado River, varying in width from ten to fifteen miles, and in depth from 4000 to 8500 feet, rising in a series of terraces, often beautifully coloured and marked, and frequently castellated and peaked. The channel is winding and sometimes very narrow, whose sombre recesses the sun’s rays rarely visit. The river is broken by numerous falls of from fifty to two hundred feet in descent, and countless rapids, whirlpools, swirling eddies, and miniature maelstroms, wherein large boulders are ofttimes churned about like pebbles in a mill-race by the fierce current. The country the Grand Canon is situated iu is a very rough one, thinly settled, and out of the beaten paths of travel, and that, with the extreme difficulty of entering it from above or by the perilous waters below, have conspired to keep one of the greatest wonders of the world a veritable terra incognito. A careful examination of the country and its formation has convinced the writer that the old theory, as taught in our text boobs of geology, that the Grand Canon is the result of the erosion of water for many millions of years, and the attempt of some to approximate the age of the globe by calculations based upon the supposed time necessary to wear down 7eoo or 8000 feet of stone, is altogether untenable and inconsistent with our present knowledge of its topography. The whole region gives unmistakable proof of once being a sea-bottom, by the water-worn rocks, deposits of salt, fossils, coral, &c., to be found everywhere. It now has an altitude of 500 to (1000 feet, the result of volcanic upheavals, and it is to this that we can look for an exp anation of the Grand Canyon. This gigantic uplifting of the earth's crust caused huge fissures to occur in the soft sand and silt, through which th& torrents of escaping waters tore with irresisßble fury, gouging out the upper part of the existing channel in a comparatively short time. This accounts for its great width from side to side, and also explains the cleavage of the Buskin Mountains, which rise 2000 feet above the level of the canyon's banks, and could never have been the work of erosion. The basaltic formation in many pares of the canyon, the immense beds of scoriae known as malapai rock, which everywhere abounds, the silicified forests, and the great craters of extinct volcanoes in : northern Arizona, all point to a time of volcanic activity, when those twin monsters of the primal world - fire and water—contended for mastery. The first stratum of the canyon, which extends down several hundred feet, is a sandstone, next comes a shale or slate formation, and underneath lies a bed of limestone, which in some places, notably Marble Canyon, seem to be much deeper than at others. In this lime-tone silver is more or less to bo found. Next comes a stratum of salt. That near the junction of the little Colorado with the parent stream has been mined for many years by the Supai, Moqui, and Ed City Indians. Below this rook salt comes the primeval granite, hard as adamant and bearing gold in some places. These canyons have a peculiar interest to the ethnologist, they having once been the home of pre-historic man. Many ruins of these cliff dwellers are to be seen,- and sometimes a rare find rewards the patient explorer in the shape of unique pottery or curious copper implements, hardened by an admixture of silica, now a lost art. Who were these mysterious people, and what was the canse of their sudden extinction ? Whether an awful pestilence swept them into oblivion or the armed hordes of some fiercer tribe tore them from their peaceful homes, will always be one of the dark secrets of that strange land. Many of their habitations are almost inaccessible—perched on some dizzy cliff, necessitating the use of ropes to reach them. A.V.H.