Consider the action of one of these streams. Its source is in the mountains, where the snows fall; its course, through the arid plains. Now, if at the river's flood storms were falling on the plains, its channel would be cut but little faster than the adjacent country would be washed, and the general level would thus be preserved; but under the conditions here mentioned, the river. continually deepens its beds; so all the streams cut deeper and still deeper, until their banks are towering cliffs of solid rock. These deep, narrow gorges are called canyons.
For more than a thousand miles along its course the Colorado has cut for itself such a canyon; but at some few points where lateral streams join it the canyon is broken, and these narrow, transverse valleys divide it into a series of canyons.
The Virgen, Kanab, Paria, Escalante, Fremont, San Rafael, Price, and Uinta on the west, the Grand, White, Yampa, San Juan, and Colorado Chiquito on the east, have also cut for themselves such narrow winding gorges, or deep canyons. Every river entering these has cut another canyon; every lateral creek has cut a canyon; every brook runs in a canyon; every rill born of a shower and born again of a shower and living only during these showers has cut for itself a canyon; so that
APACHE BASKET
CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.
the whole upper portion of the basin of the Colorado is traversed by a labyrinth of these deep gorges.
Owing to a great variety of geological conditions, these canyons differ much in general aspect. The Rio Virgen, between Long Valley and the Mormon town of Rockville, runs through Parunuweap Can-