CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.
On the northeast of the San Francisco Plateau is the valley of the Little Colorado, a tributary of the Colorado River. This river is formed by streams that head chiefly on the San Francisco Plateau, but in part on the Zuñi Plateau. The Little Colorado is a marvelous river. In seasons of great rains it is a broad but shallow torrent of mud; in seasons of drought it dwindles and sometimes entirely disappears along portions of its course. The upper tributaries usually run in beautiful box canyons. Then the river flows through a low, desolate, bad-land valley, and the river of mud is broad but shallow, except in seasons of great floods. But fifty miles or more above the junction of this stream with the Colorado River proper, it plunges into a canyon
CINDER CONE AND NECK NORTHEAST OF GRANT STATION.
with limestone walls, and steadily this canyon increases in depth, until at the mouth of the stream it has walls more than 4,000 feet in height. The contrast between this canyon portion and the upper
MESAS AND BUTTES.