If An
Ocean Of Water Should Flow Over Rocks During Eons Of Ages It Does
Not Seem Possible That It Could Cut Such A Channel.
Water sometimes does queer things, but it has never been known to
reverse nature.
By a fundamental law of hydrostatics water
always seeks its level and flows in the direction of least
resistance. If water ever made the Grand Canon it had to climb a
hill and cut its way through the backbone of the Buckskin
mountains, which are not a range of peaks but a broad plateau of
solid rock. Into this rock the canon is sunk more than a mile
deep, from six to eighteen miles wide and over two hundred miles
long.
In order to make the theory of water erosion tenable it is
assumed that the Colorado river started in its incipiency like
any other river. After a time the river bed began to rise and
was gradually pushed up more and more by some unknown
subterranean force as the water cut deeper and deeper into the
rock until the Grand Canon was formed.
Captain Hance has a theory that the canon originated in an
underground stream which tunneled until it cut its way through to
the surface. As improbable as is this theory it is as plausible
as the erosion theory, but both theories appear to be equally
absurd.
At some remote period of time the entire southwest was rent and
torn by an awful cataclysm which caused numerous fissures and
seams to appear all over the country.
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