e clay flowed over, and all was hardened into rock. Many
strata, variously colored and composed, were deposited, till our bit of
beauty was buried thousands of feet deep. The strata were tilted
variously and abraded wondrously, for our earth has been treated very
much as the fair-armed bread-maker treats the lump of dough she doubles
and kneads on the molding board. Other rocks of a much harder nature,
composed in part of the shells of inexpressible multitudes of Ocean's
infusoria, were laid down from the superincumbent sea. Still the
delicate ripple marks were preserved. Nature's vast library was being
formed, and on this scrap of a leaf not a letter was lost.

Beside this stone now lies another of the purest white. It once flowed
as water impregnated with lime, and clung to the lower side of a rock
now as high above the sea as many a famous mountain. The water
gradually evaporated, and the lime still hung like tiny drops. Between
the two stones now so near together was once a perpendicular distance
of more than a mile of impenetrable rock. How did they ever get
together? Let us see.

After the rock making, by the deposit of clay, limestone, etc., this
vast plain was lifted seven thousand feet above the sea and rimmed
round with mountains. Perhaps in being afterward volcanically tossed
in one of this old world's spasms an irregular crack ripped its way
along a few hundred miles. Into this crack rushed a great river,
perhaps also an inland ocean or vast Lake Superior, of which Salt Lake
may be a little remnant puddle. These tumultuous waters proceeded to
pulverize, dissolve, and carry away these six thousand feet of rock
deposited between the two stones. There was fall enough to make forty
Niagaras.

I was once where a deluge of rain had fallen a few days before in a
mountain valley. It tore loose some huge rocks and plunged down a
precipice of one thousand feet. The rock at the bottom was crushed
under the frightful weight of the tumbling superincumbent mass, and
every few minutes the top became the bottom. In one hour millions of
tons of rock were crushed to pebbles and spread for miles over the
plain, filling up a whole village to the roofs of the houses. I knew
three villages utterly destroyed by a rush of water only ten feet deep.
Water and gravitation make a frightful plow. Here some prehistoric
Mississippi turned its mighty furrows.

The Colorado River is one of our great rivers. It is ove