The country directly south of Ouray, Utah, is an unknown land to the archeologist. Geologically speaking it is a very rugged region, composed of eroded cliffs and deep canyons which up to within a few years has been so difficult of access that white men have rarely ventured into it. At present the country is beginning to be settled and there are a few farms where the canyon broadens enough to afford sufficient arable land for the needs of agriculture. The canyon is very picturesque, the cliffs on either side rising from its narrow bed by succession of natural steps (pl. 7, _a_) formed of sandstone outcrops alternating with soft, easily eroded cretaceous rock. Its many lateral contributing canyons are of small size, but extend deep into the mountain in the recesses of which are said to be hidden many isolated cave shelters, and other prehistoric remains. The cliffs and canyons of this region are not unlike those farther south along the Green and the Grand Rivers, a description of which, quoted from Prof. Newberry,[16] pictures vividly the appearance of the weird scenery in these canyons. He says: From this point the view swept westward over a wide extent of country in its general aspect a plane, but everywhere deeply cut by a tangled maze of canyons and thickly set with towers, castles, and spires of varied and striking forms; the most wonderful monuments of erosion which our eyes already experienced in objects of this kind had beheld. Near the mesa we are leaving stand detached portions of it of every possible form from broad, flat tables, to slender cones, crowned with pinnacles of the massive sandstone which forms the perpendicular faces of the walls of the Colorado. These castellated groups are from 1,000 to 5,000 feet in height, and no language is adequate to convey a just idea of the strange and impressive scenery formed by their grand and varied outlines. Their appearance was so strange and beautiful as to call out exclamations of delight from our party. In this wild country up to his time rarely visited by white men, Prof. Newberry also graphically described ruins not greatly unlike some of those in Hill Canyon as follows: