They are separated by the Sevier River, which flows
northward. Their southern margins constitute the highest steps of the
great system of terraces of erosion. This escarpment is known as the
Pink Cliffs. Above, pine forests are found; below the cliffs are hills
and sand-dunes. The cliffs themselves are bold and often vertical walls
of a delicate pink color.
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.
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