ABSTRACT
The great value of the Plateau County is the certainty and fullness of the evidence. Nature here is more easily read than elsewhere. She seems at times
FIG. 120. C.E.Dutton (U.S. Geological Survey)
amid those solitudes to have lifted from her countenance the veil of mystery which she habitually wears among the haunts of men. Elsewhere an enormous complexity renders the process difficult to study; here it is analyzed for us. The different factors are presented to us in such a way that we may pick out one in one place, another in another place, and study the effect of a single variable, while the other factors remain constant. The land is stripped of its normal clothing; its cliffs and cañons have dissected it and laid open its tissues and framework, and ‘he who runs may read’ if his eyes have been duly opened. As Dr Newberry most forcibly remarks: ‘Though valueless to the agriculturist, dreaded and shunned by the emigrant, the miner, and even the adventurous trapper, the Colorado Plateau is to the geologist a paradise. Nowhere on the earth’s surface, so far as we know, are the secrets of its structure so fully revealed as here.’ (Dutton, 1880, pp. 14-15)
Dutton shared with Powell his artistic reaction to this environment and several of his descriptions are reminiscent of Powell’s;
The ascent leads us among rugged hills, almost mountainous in size, strewn with black bowlders, along precipitous ledges, and by the sides of cañons. Long detours must be made to escape the chasms and to avoid the taluses of fallen blocks; deep ravines must be crossed, projecting crags doubled, and lofty battlements scaled before the summit is reached. When the broad platform is gained the story of ‘Jack and the beanstalk’, the finding of a strange and beautiful country somewhere up in the region of the clouds, no longer seems incongruous. Yesterday we were toiling over a burning soil, where nothing grows save the ashy-colored sage, the prickly pear, and a few cedars that writhe and contort their stunted limbs under a scorching sun. Today we are among forests of rare beauty and luxuriance; the air is moist and cool, the grasses are green and rank, and hosts of flowers deck the turf like the hues of a Persian carpet. The forest opens in wide parks and winding avenues, which the fancy can easily people with fays and woodland nymphs. On either side the sylvan walls look impenetrable, and for the most part so thickly is the ground strewn with fallen trees, that any attempt to enter is as serious a matter as forcing an abattis. (Dutton, 1880, p. 285)
Dutton followed Powell also in his emphasis of the Colorado River’s antecedent origin. He is very definite in his statement that the course of the river and of its tributaries was determined by its alignment upon the original form of the surface and had been maintained despite later structural movements.
