Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 6, 2025
And when we examine the escarpments, hills, buttes, and other monumental masses of the plateau on either side of the canyon, we discover that an amount of material has been carried off in the general denudation of the region compared with which even that carried away in the making of the Grand Canyon is as nothing.
There were the sinuous buttes that bordered the opposite shore of the river solemn sentinels guarding the beauty and purity of this virgin land. Near her were sloping hills, dotted with thorny cactus and other prickly plants, and now rose a bald rock spire with its suggestion of grim lonesomeness. In the southern and eastern distances were the plains, silent, vast, unending.
On the right, the irregular heights of the Buttes Chaumont loomed out dense and dark against the heavy sky, whilst to the left, on ahead, a faintly glimmering, greyish streak of reflected light revealed the proximity of the canal. Close to the spot where the main Route de Meux intersects the Chemin de Pantin, Chauvelin slackened his pace.
Finally Bartley settled to the best long-distance gait of all, the running walk, and began to enjoy the vista; the wide-sweeping, southern reaches dotted with buttes, the line of the far hills crowded against the sky, and the intense light in which there was no faintest trace of blur or moisture. Everything within normal range of vision stood out clean-edged and definite.
Heavy Collar had followed the river up, and had gone a long distance out of his way; and when he awoke from his sleep he too started straight for the Belly River Buttes, as he had said he would. When his party reached the Buttes, one of them went up on top of the hill to watch.
Even the feeling of danger was only an illusion, however, composite of the falling rain, the deepening twilight, and the night that had already enveloped the plunge of the canon below. Finally Uncle Jim stopped just within the drip from the cliffs. "Here she is," said he. We descended eagerly. A deer bounded away from the base of the buttes.
All about stood domed and pyramidal and hawk-headed buttes. On the river bank huge old cottonwoods, worn and leaning, offered the only shadow in a land flooded with vehement, devouring light. The long journey was at an end. Daniel raised a peculiar halloo, which brought a horseman hurrying out to meet him. The brother had not forgotten their boyish signal.
All Westerners are likable, with the possible exception of Greasy Pete. I rather looked forward to my visit. But my guide had failed to mention the buttes; so, although I jogged as west as I knew how, I found I had to wind around a butte about ever so often. I crossed a ravine with equal frequency, and all looked alike. It is not surprising that soon I could not guess where I was.
We are now down among the buttes, and in a region the surface of which is naked, solid rock a beautiful red sandstone, forming a smooth, undulating pavement. The Indians call this the Toom'pin Tuweap', or "Rock Land," and sometimes the Toom'pin wunear'l Tuweap', or "Land of Standing Rock." Off to the south we see a butte in the form of a fallen cross.
Sometimes, when a dissipated cloud tumbles its contents into the region, the Amargosa is filled bank full with water; but few prospectors have seen more than a trickling stream flowing in its bed. We turn our way out of the wagon-trail toward Funeral Range to find the canyon of Furnace Creek, and in time we are clambering up a narrow gulch between the multicolored strata of clay buttes.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking