Show the old settler my aly dear san turners Tua ners bluff is a place of pron pronounced bounced echoes second echoes t third ii i r d echoes they intrigued me there before I 1 was three years old it t was the un unfailing failing answer of the rocks to every sound made loud enough for them to li hear ar so the rocks could speak of that I 1 was certain because I 1 heard them I 1 gazed with my baby eyes at the towering cliffs wondering at the charm within them their mystery and majesty oli oh the wondrous rocks of san juan I 1 loved them then I 1 love them more now when I 1 got big enough to mount my yellow pony and ride away to the fairyland fairy land of comb reef grand gulch clay hill and castle wash the charm of the rocks was bewildering not only did I 1 hear their responses but I 1 saw profiles on rocks in every direction and there were knobs and pinnacles and forms of curious sort every one of them being somehow written all over with its own history in lower grand gulch deep in the bowels of the earth I 1 was supposed to be helping with a herd of tired cattle but I 1 was entranced with the walls towering above us walls which answered every rattle i din and whisper in a most fascinating we carne came to a wide place in the gulch where a great round rock half a mile in diameter towered up from the bottom of the canyon to the height of the cliffs on each side it seemed to be cloaked in mystery bry no one could get of it and I 1 lost all account of those bellowing cows as I 1 hunted on its pray gray walls for its history then I 1 found it and read rad dimly and uncertainly the dates were in such long drawn out strings of ciphers they made me dizzy and I 1 even try lo 10 get them with any exactness this is what I 1 read from the continued on page eight I 1 THE OLD SETTLER continued from pape page 1 inelly newly exposed surface of the wide cedar ridge rp region zion a stream felt its way along the line of least resistance si stance towards the lower beels lex els of what was to become the gorge of tile the san juan river As to jhc thc when of that day I 1 could mak out only that it w was ag millions aud and millions of years agn a ino e yd vt it il was in very recent times EIS W compared to the vast periods of time involved in the laying down of the thick sedimentary layers of which the canyon ca nyon walls are composed if I 1 misinterpret tile the rec 1 ord to say it is twenty million years since that first stream began feeling its way towards the ihu gan feeling its way towards the san juan I 1 will still be doing as well as tile the expert translators of lithographical records who never dare to be exact whenever it was in tile the mysterious yesterday that that trailblazer stream started on oil its way vay it was about to pass on the east cast side of a knoll when a little e ridge 1 made it back up tip and feel its way w ay clear around the west side of the knoll and up against the south side of that little ridge b before it turned off to the south southeast easi thus it formed a great letter C with that little ridge as a tongue in the mouth of the letter then with its endless number of floods all loaded with sand and drift and gravel it carved that big letter deeper and deeper into the earth while that narrow mouth and its 5 tongue was worn thinner and thinner by the floods rushing agai against ast 1 it from the north and from the south sida I 1 when the old stream had cut so deeply into the earth that its cutting ting was more on its sides than its bottom it wore that tongue so thin that with one of its big rushes of water it broke through the flood met itself in a boil boiling ing confusion it ran no more around the base of this now highly elevated island but took the straight course on which it had started millions of years before then in the weary ages and ages that followed all the thin wall above the stream was worn away by the storms and frosts and winds and the ponderous tower stood alone in the middle of the deep gulch gazing up in ecstasy from the depths I 1 was puzzling over the dates oblivious to the bawling herd when somebody yelled hey kid wake up look at them co cows Ws ALBERT R LYMAN |