In one of the earlier years of exploration I stood on the summit of the Pink Cliffs of the Paunsagunt Plateau, 9,000 feet above the level of the sea. Below me, to the southwest, I could look off into the canyons of the Virgen River, down into the canyon of the Kanab, and far away into the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. From the lowlands of the Great Basin and from the depths of the Grand Canyon clouds crept up over the cliffs and floated over the landscape below me, concealing the canyons and mantling the mountains and mesas and buttes; still on toward me the clouds rolled, burying the landscape in their progress, until at last the region below was covered by a mantle of storm--a tumultuous sea of rolling clouds, black and angry in parts, white as the foam of cataracts here and there, and everywhere flecked with resplendent sheen. Below me spread a vast ocean of vapor, for I was above the clouds. On descending to the plateau, I found that a great storm had swept the land, and the dry arroyos of the day before were the channels of a thousand streams of tawny water, born of the ocean of vapor which had invaded the land before my vision. Below the Pink Cliffs another irregular zone of plateaus is found, stretching out to the margin of the Gray Cliffs. The Gray Cliffs are composed of a homogeneous sandstone which in some places weathers gray, but in others is as white as virgin snow. On the top of these cliffs hills and sand-dunes are found, but everywhere on the Gray Cliff margin the rocks are carved in fantastic forms; not in buttes and towers and pinnacles, but in great rounded bosses of rock. 98 The Virgen River heads back in the Pink Cliffs of the Markagunt Plateau and with its tributaries crosses one of these plateaus above the Gray Cliffs, carving a labyrinth of deep gorges. This is known as the Colob Plateau. Above, there is a vast landscape of naked, white and gray sandstone, billowing in fantastic bosses. On the margins of the canyons these are rounded off into great vertical walls, and at the bottom of every winding canyon a beautiful stream of water is found 99 powell-canyons-61.jpg A PERMIAN BUTTE. 100 powell-canyons-62.jpg VERMILION CLIFFS AT KANAB. CLIFFS AND TERRACES. 101 running over quicksands. Sometimes the streams in their curving have cut under the rocks, and overhanging cliffs of towering altitudes are seen; and somber chambers are found between buttresses that uphold the walls. Among the Indians this is known as the "Rock Rovers' Land," and is peopled by mythic beings of uncanny traits.