| Show I 1 the old settler my dear san juanes Juaner sf th in my limited with the countries of the world these western mountains have tor for me a greater lure than any other region in all creation from the white topped heights of montana wll w streams reams leaping from their dizzy ridges to tho the dry mountains of southern arizona they have a charm more gripping than any I 1 have found anywhere else I 1 love the great west in general with its big mountains grew green valleys and enchanted deserts I 1 love its bald rocks its rushing rivers and its friendly wilderness but I 1 love san juan utah in particular with its little mountains its sagebrush prairies its sandhills sand hills bills anda gulches and splendid remoteness san juan became a basic fe atre of my philosophy in the impressionable years of my childhood the precept of bf its big rocks were among the first to command my attention in 1891 1 I climbed up in into to clay hill pass I 1 had been there before ten years before when I 1 came through the pass in my ra mother otherA arms in hung to pony i tail as he struggled up the steep mountain side and when we came out on the level opening between the high echoing walls I 1 saw it as the extraordinary creation of some mighty engineer in all the years since that time I 1 have failed to evolve any satisfactory theory as to how haw it could have been made the lofty table that it is between two mountains towering still higher r ard yet with no cut of an ancient stream in its face when I 1 looked down at as the massive clay banks of green red yellow and blue below me ery and the charm grew deeper still on the rim of that table a raindrop rain drop can be split leaving halt half of it to fall down the steep slopes towards grand gulch and the other half to follow the ion long 0 devious course of castle wash to the san juan river nature employs blackst glaciers and ocean waves to make level stretches of country but the high smooth floor of cf clay hill pass was not made uniform in surface by waves and the question arises whether at some distant past the country sloped from the west to the hill and a mass of ice chocked the opening to tumble down over the clay banks thinking Thin kinc in this line it is to be observed that there are no foothills by the cliffs in the pass as are to be found a little way down the canyon where the ice did not rasp them down in passing down castle wash fifteen miles there is gripping mystery again where the mighty engineer seems to have turned the wash from its natural slope towards the colorado river ard made it to go for no accountable reason off into the san juan in all those fifteen miles of the wash below clay hill big canyons come in from each side the first of them from high mesas but at that fifteen mile point there are no more canyons coming in from the right though they continue to come in from the left at that fifteen mile point where the wash turns to the south the side of the canyon is but a comparatively ively low ridge from the bottom of the wash to the east while to the west the country top of which you look down to the slopes straight to the colorado As you look at it you wonder how it can be that the wash is turned off to the south with such a little barrier keeping it from goin going M on down the slope the way it started this is just one little area of our big san juan where the primeval designer has done things which cause us to wonder and admire and even to praise as the splendid evidence of the mighty creator albert K r lyman |
