Below the Gray Cliffs another zone of plateaus is found, separated by the north-and-south faults and divided from the Colob series by the Gray Cliffs and demarcated from the plateaus to the south by the Vermilion Cliffs. The Vermilion Cliffs that face the south are of surpassing beauty. The rocks are of orange and red above and of chocolate, lavender, gray, and brown tints below. The canyons that cut through the cliffs from north to south are of great diversity and all are of profound interest. In these canyon walls many caves are found, and often the caves contain lakelets and pools of clear water. Canyons and re-entrant angles abound. The faces of the cliffs are terraced and salients project onto the floors below. The outlying buttes are many. Standing away to the south and facing these cliffs when the sun is going down beyond the desert of the Great Basin, shadows are seen to creep into the deep recesses, while the projecting forms are illumined, so that the lights and shadows are in great and sharp contrast; then a million lights seem to glow from a background of black gloom, and a great bank of Tartarean fire stretches across the landscape. At the foot of the Vermilion Cliffs there is everywhere a zone of vigorous junipers and piñons, for the belt of country is favored with comparatively abundant rain. When the clouds drift over the plateaus below from the south and west and strike the Vermilion Cliffs, they are abruptly lifted 2,000 feet, and to make the climb they must unload their burdens; so that here copious rains are discharged, and by such storms the cliffs are carved and ever from age to age carried back farther to the north. In the Pink Cliffs above and the Gray Cliffs and the Vermilion Cliffs, there are many notches that mark channels running northward which had their sources on these plateaus when they extended farther to the south. The Rio Virgen is the only stream heading in the Pink Cliffs and running into the Colorado which is perennial. The other rivers and creeks carry streams of water in rainy seasons only. When a succession of dry years occurs the canyons coming through the 102 CANYONS OF THE COLORADO. cliffs are choked below, as vast bodies of sand are deposited. But now and then, ten or twenty years apart, great storms or successions of storms come, and the channels are flooded and cut their way again through the drifting sands to solid rock below. Thus the streams below are alternately choked and cleared from period to period.