The Uinta Valley is the ancient and present home of the Uinta Indians, a tribe speaking the Uinta language of the Shoshonean family. Their habits, customs, institutions, and mythology are essentially the same as those of the Ute Indians of the Grand River country, already described. In this valley there are also found many ruins of ancient pueblo-building peoples--of what stock is not known.
The Tavaputs Plateau is one of the stupendous features of this country. On the west it merges into the Wasatch Mountains; on the north it descends by wooded slopes into the Uinta Valley. Its summit is forest-clad and among the forests are many beautiful parks. On the south it ends in a great escarpment which descends into Castle Valley. This southern escarpment presents one of the most wonderful facades of the world. It is from 2,000 to 4,000 feet high. The descent is not made by one bold step, for it is cut by canyons and cliffs. It is a zone several
CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.
miles in width which is a vast labyrinth of canyons, cliffs, buttes, pinnacles, minarets, and detached rocks of Cyclopean magnitude, the whole destitute of soil and vegetation, colored in many brilliant tones and tints, and carved in many weird forms,--a land of desolation, dedicated forever to the geologist and the artist, where civilization can find no resting-place.
Then comes Castle Valley, to describe which is to beggar language and pall imagination. On the north is the Tavaputs; on the west is the Wasatch Plateau, which lies to the south of the Wasatch Mountains and is here the west boundary of the Plateau Province; on the south are indescribable mesas and mountains; on the east is Grand River, a placid stream meandering through a valley of meadows. Within these boundaries there is a landscape of gigantic rock forms, interrupted here and there by bad-land hills, dominated with the towering cliffs of Tavaputs, the bold escarpment of the Wasatch Plateau, and the volcanic peaks of the Henry Mountains on the south. It is a vast forest of rock forms, and in its midst is San Rafael Swell, an elevation crowned with still more gigantic rock forms. Among the rocks pools and lakelets are found, and little streams run in canyons that seem like chasms cleft to nadir
AN INDIAN HUNTER. ... ....