fragments of lava. In the walls of this crater many caves are found, and here again a village was established, the caves in the scoria being utilized as habitations of men. These little caves were fashioned into rooms of more symmetry and convenience than originally found, and the openings to the caves were walled. Nor did these people neglect the gods, for in this crater town, as in the cinder-cone town, a place of worship was prepared. Many other caves opening into the canyon and craters of this plateau were utilized in like manner as homes for tribal people, and in one cave far to the south a fine collection of several hundred pieces of pottery has been made. 44 CANYONS OF THE COLORADO. On the northeast of the San Francisco Plateau is the valley of the Little Colorado, a tributary of the Colorado River. This river is formed by streams that head chiefly on the San Francisco Plateau, but in part on the Zuñi Plateau. The Little Colorado is a marvelous river. In seasons of great rains it is a broad but shallow torrent of mud; in seasons of drought it dwindles and sometimes entirely disappears along portions of its course. The upper tributaries usually run in beautiful box canyons. Then the river flows through a low, desolate, bad-land valley, and the river of mud is broad but shallow, except in seasons of great floods. But fifty miles or more above the junction of this stream with the Colorado River proper, it plunges into a canyon powell-canyons-21.jpg CINDER CONE AND NECK NORTHEAST OF GRANT STATION. with limestone walls, and steadily this canyon increases in depth, until at the mouth of the stream it has walls more than 4,000 feet in height. The contrast between this canyon portion and the upper MESAS AND BUTTES. 45 valley portion is very great. Above, the river ripples in a broad sheet of mud; below, it plunges with violence over great cataracts and rapids. Above, the bad lands stretch on either hand. This is powell-canyons-22.jpg TWO LARGE NECKS, THE MORE DISTANT ONE BEING THE CABAZON. MESAS IN THE FOREGROUND. the region of the Painted Desert, for the marls and soft rocks of which the hills are composed are of many colors--chocolate, red, vermilion, pink, buff, and gray; and the naked hills are carved in fantastic forms. Passing to the region below, suddenly the channel is narrowed and tumbles down into a deep, solemn gorge with towering limestone cliffs. All round the margin of the valley of the Little Colorado, on the side next to the Zuñi Plateau and on the side next to the San Francisco Plateau, every creek and every brook runs in a beautiful canyon. Then down in the valley there are stretches of desert covered with sage and grease wood. Still farther down we come to the bad lands of the Painted Desert; and scattered through the entire region low mesas or smaller plateaus are everywhere found.