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The latter, and the canyon of the Paria, make the edges of the great mesa called the Paria Plateau, and, running on north to the very head of the Kaibab uplift, strike off south-westerly to near Pipe Spring, where they turn and run in a north-west direction to the Virgen River. Between the receding lines of these cliffs, at the Paria, is practically the head of the Grand Canyon.
Next to the Kaibab division of the Grand Canyon, the greatest declivity occurs in the Uinta region, in the Canyon of Lodore. The profile of the river in these two districts is approximately given on page 57. The average depth of the Grand Canyon is about 4000 feet. Its width at the top varies from 4 1/2 to 12 miles. This is the extreme outer cliff-line.
Its southern extremity is a portion of the wall of the Grand Canyon; its western margin is the wall of the West Kaibab Fault; its eastern edge is the wall of the East Kaibab Fault; and its northern point is found where the two faults join. Here antelope feed and many a deer goes bounding over the fallen timber.
In fact, the northern belt of the Painted Desert comprises the Kaibab Forest, and the southern belt the Tusayan and Coconino Forests, the Mesas of the Moki and Navajo Land lying like a wedge between these two belts.
Isis has an elevation of seven thousand twenty-eight feet, and is the eastern support of the gigantic rock mountain which towers over all the lesser structures. This is Shiva Temple, a solid mass, sliced off from the main Kaibab.
The air turned decidedly cold this day, a hard wind swept up the river, the sky above was overcast, and we had little doubt that snow was falling on the Kaibab Plateau, which we could not see, but which we knew rose to the height of 5500 feet above us, but a few miles to the northwest of this camp.
At the mouth of the Kanab the altitude of the river-bed is 1800 feet above the sea, showing a fall in the interval of 890 feet. The greatest declivity is about 210 feet in 10 miles, in what is termed the Kaibab division, extending from a point 10 miles below the Little Colorado to a point 58 miles farther down. Here the smooth stretches of river are long, the rapids short and violent.
There are in the world valleys which are longer and a few which are deeper. There are valleys flanked by summits loftier than the palisades of the Kaibab. Still the Grand Canyon is the sublimest thing on earth. It is so not alone by virtue of its magnitudes, but by virtue of the whole its tout ensemble."
The great point, nearest to us, was named Dutton Point, after the poet-geologist, whose monograph on the Canyon will ever be a memorial to his love of the place, his scientific accuracy of observation, and his poetic eloquence of description. It is between Kaibab and Powell Plateaus that Bass's Trail to Point Sublime climbs its circuitous and winding way, this portion being called "The Saddle."
A number of us were left for a while in camp in a valley lying between the Kaibab Plateau, then called Buckskin Mountain, and what is now called Paria Plateau, at a spring in a gulch of the Vermilion Cliffs. Two large rocks at this place had fallen together in such a way that one could crawl under for shelter.
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