valley portion is very great. Above, the river ripples in a broad sheet of mud; below, it plunges with violence over great cataracts and rapids. Above, the bad lands stretch on either hand. This is
TWO LARGE NECKS, THE MORE DISTANT ONE BEING THE CABAZON. MESAS IN THE FOREGROUND.
the region of the Painted Desert, for the marls and soft rocks of which the hills are composed are of many colors--chocolate, red, vermilion, pink, buff, and gray; and the naked hills are carved in fantastic forms. Passing to the region below, suddenly the channel is narrowed and tumbles down into a deep, solemn gorge with towering limestone cliffs.
All round the margin of the valley of the Little Colorado, on the side next to the Zuñi Plateau and on the side next to the San Francisco Plateau, every creek and every brook runs in a beautiful canyon. Then down in the valley there are stretches of desert covered with sage and grease wood. Still farther down we come to the bad lands of the Painted Desert; and scattered through the entire region low mesas or smaller plateaus are everywhere found.
On the northeast side of the Little Colorado a great mesa country stretches far to the northward. These mesas are but minor plateaus that are separated by canyons and canyon valleys, and sometimes by
CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.
low sage plains. They rise from a few hundred to 2,000 or 3,000 feet above the lowlands on which they are founded. The distinction between plateaus and mesas is vague; in fact, in local usage the term mesa is usually applied to all of these tables which do not carry volcanic moun-