MASTERPIECE OF EROSION

HE rain falling in the plowed field forms rivulets in the furrows. The rivulets unite in a muddy torrent in the roadside gutter. With succeeding showers the gutter wears an ever-deepening channel in the soft soil. With the passing season the gutter becomes a gully.

Here and there, in places, its banks undermine and fall in. Here and there the rivulets from the field wear tiny tributary gullies. Between the breaks in the banks and the tributaries, irregular masses of earth remain standing, sometimes resembling mimic cliffs, sometimes washed and worn into mimic peaks and spires.

Such roadside erosion is familiar to us all. A hundred times we have idly noted the fantastic water-carved walls and minaretted slopes of these ditches. But seldom, perhaps, have we realized that the muddy roadside ditch and the world-famous Grand Canyon of the Colorado are, from nature's stand point, identical; that they differ only in soil and size.

The arid States of our great Southwest constitute an enormous plateau or table-land from four to eight thousand feet above sea-level.

Rivers gather into a few desert water systems. The largest of these is that which, in its lower courses, has, in unnumbered ages, worn the mighty chasm of the Colorado.

FROM GRAND VIEW. "BUT WAIT! THE CLOUDS AND THE SUNSET, THE MOONRISE AND THE STORM, WILL TRANSFORM IT INTO A SPLENDOR NO MOUNTAIN RANGE CAN SURPASS."—HAMLIN GARLAND Photography by Putnam & Valentine

WHEN CLOUDS AND CANYON MEET AND MERGE Copyright by Fred Harvey

ON THE MIGHTY RIVER'S BRINK Photograph by U.S. Forest Service

A QUIET STRETCH BETWEEN TWO RAPIDS Within the Canyon the river is crossed by cars suspended on wire cables, and also, in quiet reaches, by boats; there are no bridges

WHERE THE RIVER RESTS BELOW THE CELEBRATED MARBLE CANYON BEFORE TAKING ITS PLUNGE INTO THE GIGANTIC CANYON BELOW The Colorado rolls through many miles of vast canyons before it reaches Grand Canyon Copyright by Fred Harvey