This valley, or, more properly, _valle_--a word of very different signification--is in reality a level plain, flanked on each side by a continuous line of bluffs or "benches"--themselves forming the abutments of a still higher plain, which constitutes the general level of the country. The width between the bluffs is five or six miles; but, at the distance of some ten miles from our point of view, the cliffs converge-- apparently closing in the valley in that direction. This, however, is only apparent. Above the butte is another deep canon, through which the river has cleft its way. The intervening space is a picture fair to behold. The surface, level as a billiard-table, is covered with _gramma_ grass, of a bright, almost emerald verdure. The uniformity of this colour is relieved by cotton-wood copses, whose foliage is but one shade darker. Commingling with these, and again slightly darkening the hue of the frondage, are other trees, with a variety of shrubs or climbing-plants--as clematis, wild roses, and willows. Here and there, a noble poplar stands apart--as if disdaining to associate with the more lowly growth of the groves. These "topes" are of varied forms: some rounded, some oval, and others of more irregular shape. Many of them appear as if planted by the hands of the landscape-gardener; while the Huerfano, winding through their midst, could not have been more gracefully guided, had it been specially designed for an "ornamental water." The butte itself, rising in the centre of the plain, and towering nearly two hundred feet above the general level, has all the semblance of an artificial work--not of human hands, but a cairn constructed by giants. Just such does it appear--a vast pyramidal cone, composed of huge prismatic blocks of granite, black almost as a coal--the dark colour being occasioned by an iron admixture in the rock. For two-thirds of its slope, a thick growth of cedar covers the mound with a skirting of darkest green. Above this appear the dark naked prisms--piled one upon the other, in a sort of irregular crystallisation, and ending in a summit slightly truncated. Detached boulders lie around its base, huge pieces that having yielded to the disintegrating influences of rain and wind, had lost their balance, and rolled down the declivity of its sides. No other similar elevation is near--the distant bluffs alone equalling it in height. But there the resemblance ends; for the latter are a formation of stratified sandstone, while the rocks composing the butte are purely granitic! Even in a geological point of view, is the Orphan Butte isolated from all the world. In a double sense, does it merit its distinctive title.