Canyons of the Colorado | Page 9

these tables which do not carry volcanic mountains. The mesas are carved out of platforms of horizontal or nearly horizontal rocks by perennial or intermittent streams, and as the climate is exceedingly arid most of the streams flow only during seasons of rain, and for the greater part of the year they are dry arroyos. Many of the longer channels are dry for long periods. Some of them are opened only by floods that come ten or twenty years apart.
The region is also characterized by many buttes. These are plateaus or mesas of still smaller dimensions in horizontal distance, though their altitude may be hundreds or thousands of feet. Like the mesas and plateaus, they sometimes form very conspicuous features of a landscape and are of marvelous beauty by reason of their sculptured escarpments. Below they are often buttressed on a magnificent scale. Softer beds give rise to a vertical structure of buttresses and columns, while the harder strata appear in great horizontal lines, suggesting architectural entablature. Then the strata of which these buttes are composed are of many vivid colors; so color and form unite in producing architectural effects, and the buttes often appear like Cyclopean temples.
There is yet one other peculiarity of this landscape deserving mention here. Before the present valleys and canyons were carved and the mesas lifted in relief, the region was one of great volcanic activity. In various places vents were formed and floods of lava poured in sheets over the land. Then for a time volcanic action ceased, and rains and rivers carved out the valleys and left the mesas and mountains standing. These same agencies carried away the lava beds that spread over the lands. But wherever there was a lava vent it was filled with molten matter, which on cooling was harder than the sandstones and marls through which it penetrated. The chimney to the region of fire below was thus filled with a black rock which yielded more slowly to the disintegrating agencies of weather, and so black rocks rise up from mesas on every hand. These are known as volcanic necks, and, being of a somber color, in great contrast with the vividly colored rocks from which they rise and by which they are surrounded, they lend a strange aspect to the landscape. Besides these necks, there are a few volcanic mountains that tower over all the landscape and gather about themselves the clouds of heaven. Mount Taylor, which stands over the divide on the drainage of the Rio Grande del Norte, is one of the most imposing of the dead volcanoes of this region. Still later eruptions of lava are found here and there, and in the present valleys and canyons sheets of black basalt are often found. These are known as coulees, and sometimes from these coulees cinder cones arise.
This valley of the Little Colorado is also the site of many ruins, and the villages or towns found in such profusion were of mueh larger size than those on the San Francisco Plateau. Some of the pueblo-building peoples yet remain. The Zuni Indians still occupy their homes, and they prove to be a most interesting people. They have cultivated the soil from time immemorial. They build their houses of stone and line them with plaster; and they have many interesting arts, being skilled potters and deft weavers. The seasons are about equally divided between labor, worship, and play.
A hundred miles to the northwest of the Zuni pueblo are the seven pueblos of Tusayan: Oraibi, Shumopavi, Shupaulovi, Mashongnavi, Sichumovi, Walpi, and llano. These towns are built on high cliffs. The people speak a language radically different from that of the Zuni, but, with the exception of that of the inhabitants of Hano, closely allied to that of the Utes. The people of Hano are Tewans, whose ancestors moved from the Rio Grande to Tusayan during the great Pueblo revolt against Spanish authority in 1680-96.
Between the Little Colorado and the Rio San Juan there is a vast system of plateaus, mesas, and buttes, volcanic mountains, volcanic cones, and volcanic cinder cones. Some of the plateaus are forest-clad and have perennial waters and are gemmed with lakelets. The mesas are sometimes treeless, but are often covered with low, straggling, gnarled cedars and pifions, trees that are intermediate in size between the bushes of sage in the desert and the forest trees of the elevated regions. On the western margin of this district the great Navajo Mountain stands, on the brink of Glen Canyon, and from its summit many of the stupendous gorges of the Colorado River can be seen. Central in the region stand the Carrizo Mountains, the Lukachukai Mountains, the Tunitcha Mountains, and the Chusca Mountains, which in fact constitute one system, extending from north to south in the order