Speaking of these weather-sculptured buttes or mountains of bare and splendidly colored rock which stand within the outer cañon, Dutton says:
"Some of these are gorgeous pagodas, sculptured in the usual fashion, and ending in sharp finials at the summit. Others are the cloister buttes with wing-walls and gables, panels and alcoves. All are quarried out upon a superlative scale of magnitude, and every one of them is a marvel. The great number and intricacy of these objects confuse the senses and do not permit the eye to rest. The mind wanders incessantly from one to another and cannot master the multitude of things crowded at once upon its attention. There are scores of these structures, any one of which, if it could be placed by itself upon some distant plain, would be regarded as one of the great wonders of the world," and of the colors he says:
"The color-effects are rich and wonderful. They are due to the inherent colors of the rocks, modified by the atmosphere. Like any other great series of strata in the Plateau Province, the carboniferous has its own range of characteristic colors, which might serve to distinguish it even if we had no other criterion. The summit strata are pale-gray, with a faint yellowish cast. Beneath them the cross-bedded sandstone appears, showing a mottled surface of pale-pinkish hue. Underneath this member are nearly 1,000 feet of the Lower Aubrey sandstones, displaying an intensely brilliant red, which is somewhat masked by the talus shot down from the gray, cherty limestones at the summit. Beneath the Lower Aubrey is the face of the Red Wall limestone, from 2,000 to 3,000 feet high. It has a strong red tone, but a very peculiar one. Most of the red strata of the west have the brownish or vermilion tones, but these are rather purplish-red, as if the pigment had been treated to a dash of blue. It is not quite certain that this may not arise in part from the intervention of the blue haze, and probably it is rendered more conspicuous by this cause; but, on the whole, the purplish cast seems to be inherent. This is the dominant color-mass of the cañon, for the expanse of rock surface displayed is more than half in the Red Wall group. It is less brilliant than the fiery-red of the Aubrey sandstones, but is still quite strong and rich. Beneath are the deep-browns of the lower carboniferous.
"The dark iron-black of the horn-blendic schists revealed in the lower gorge makes but little impression upon the boundless expanse of bright colors above."
| ||
| 217 | OIL WELL. | CHICAGO, A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER. |
OIL WELLS.
OIL IS found in Pennsylvania in oil-bearing sand-rocks, which are considered as the reservoirs in which the distilled product has found a permanent lodgment. The depth of the oil-sand or sand-rock in this state is from 800 to 1,900 feet. There are often several strata, one above the other, containing oil.