The Mu-Kun-Tu-Weap

The Mu-Kun-Tu-Weap. BY ALFRED LAMBOURNE. If the Little Zion, the Mu-Kun-Tu-Weap, or Valley of Many Waters, or the Canyon of the Rio Virgen, or of the Many-colored Sandstone — whatever name we choose to call it by — were the only one of its kind in the "Rock-Rovers' Land," still it would be enough to give a scenic importance to the southern part of the state of Utah. The Mu-Kun-Tu-Weap, as I like to call it, left an indelible impression upon my youthful mind when I visited the place, in the year 1871. Since that time, I believe, I have been in every kind of can- yon and valley, that the West has to show. And yet I have not forgotten the Little Zion. It differs entirely from the canyons of the Grand river, the Yellowstone, the Yosemite valley, or the Grand canyon of the Colorado. Of course, it is not to be com- pared in wonder or grandeur to the two last named places, yet it has such a decided character of its own, and is so remarkable in its way, that it forms a distinctive feature in western scenery. This more on account of its color-effects than the forms of its cliffs and peaks and walls. The great plateau of sandstone where occurs the Mu-Kun-Tu-

THE MU-KUN-TU-WEAP . 529 Weap, and those wonderful fissures, the Kanarra canyons, covers a vast extent, and is a dominating fact of southern Utah. Fear not, my reader, I am not about to use expletives in recalling the Kanarras, or to attempt to become eloquent in a description of the Mu-Kun-Tu-Weap. That is useless, yet it is a strange sight, and a sensation, too, when one is in those narrow and profound splits in the rocks, called the Kanarras, and in the day time sees the sky above like a blue ribbon, and at night like a river of stars! And certainly the variety and brilliancy of the colors of the sandstones, that edge the Little Zion, tempt one to the use of unusual language. But I refrain, and hope that a statement of simple facts, in this very short sketch, will suffice to give a true conception to the reader of the wonders of the focal scene in the "Rock-Rovers' Land." While I write, there lie before me half a dozen old sketches in oil of the Mu-Kun-Tu-Weap. The surface of these sketches is gritty with sand. This sand was driven upon the sketches while the color was yet wet, and so have there remained. Under the magnifying glass, the sand shows many colors. It ranges from pure white, through cream, yellow, orange, vermillion, and so on, from Venetian into deep Indian red; and so in hues are the cliffs from which the sand came. The dark, sombre colors are in the foundation tiers of stone and the highest strata, the capping of the highest towers and domes, are of a sudden marble white. The Circle Cliffs, the Orange Cliffs, Vermillion Bluffs, Red Mesa, White Butte, the Dome of Kolob, the Temples of the Rio Virgen, on the map of Utah, — these names tell one what to expect, in color and form, in the southern part of the state. And Flood canyon and Oquarius plateau are not wrongly named. There are other plateaus — Kolob, Awapa, Kaipporowitts — and all are at times great collectors of water. There are many flood canyons, too. Water it was that laid down all the sediments of the mauy plateaus, and water it was that did all the wonderful carving of the "Rock Rovers' Land." And the manner in which the water now comes out, after rain, from the fissures in the arid sandstone hills, is surprising. One sometimes sees remarkable sights at the base of these plateaus, and what the sometimes dry-gullies of the Basin Rim can do as feeders of the Colorado.

Rather than invent a description of the Temples of the Rio Virgen, the principle scenic feature of the Mu-Kun-Tu-Weap, I will, with the reader's permission, give an extract or two from the pages of my boyhood journal, of 1871: "Nineteen times we forded the Rio Virgen; seven times in the valley proper, and twelve times in the canyon or valley of the Little Zion. Nineteen times our poor, jaded mules pulled the crazy old wagon through the water and sands of the circling stream. Like some octogenarian, infirm and toil-worn, yet whom death had apparently forgotten, the stream added mile after mile, like he, year after year, to a precarious existence. Time seems ever ready to end the life of the aged man, and these hot sands appear ever ready to swallow up the feeble river. I refer to the dwindling waters in the lower valley. In the Mu-Kun-Tu-Weap the Rio Virgen is strong and noisy enough, and in both places it is sometimes a roaring stream. "The Temples came into view with considerable theatric dis- play. At a turn in the rough and little-used road, where the stream brawled loudest, and foamed over the ruins of the cliffs, and above the arrow-wood and pinion pine, and where the oose stood in the crevices of the foreground rocks, their red — I should rather say parti-colored — mural fronts — fretted, traced and sculp- tured— stood against the deep blue of a cloudless sky. The bril- liant sunlight made them a wonderful sight to behold, nor were they less remarkable in appearance as the sun fell westward, and the edges of the wild rocks caught the red fire, making them redder than before, though in places they were purple-barred with shadows. The upper parts of the assembled walls of the Temples of the Mu-Kun-Tu-Weap, and also of the Pa-Run-u-Weap, as well as Kolob, long held the light. From the Dome of Kolob, the highest point of all, the light was last to fail. That this Dome had once been an island, it is easy to believe. All these plateaus have once been in the bottoms of ancient seas. "Remarkable as this scene was, I was yet the more impressed by a view of the Temples as they appeared from farther up the valley, and looking down the course of the stream. There several of the great rock structures were in sight at one time, and one could realize better, too, the great height. The Rio Virgen

THE MU-KUN-TU-WEAP. 531 spread out into a large pool there, and the Temples were reflected in the gathered waters. Above this point, the valley suddenly narrowed into a defile. There was an abandoned hut at this point, and the ruins of an orchard. One of the sudden freshets to which the stream is subjected had wrecked what had once promised to be a pleasant, if very primitive, homestead. We had made this hut our headquarters, and made excursions from it up and down the stream. Several times at night, I fired my rifle to listen to the wild replying of the echoes amid the cliffs. I was astonished to see, this morning, a tiny stream of water which fell sheer down a bare face of precipice, frozen from top to base. A few minutes after being touched by the warm rays of the sun, the thin col- umn of ice fell, with a rattling noise, to the valley floor." Thomas Carlyle, when he made his first excursion to Scot- land, stipulated with his escort that he was to be shown no fash- ionable "scenic lions," He wished, apparently, to make his deduc- tion from the "average." The Temples of the Rio Virgen, the Mu-Kun-Tu-Weap, were no "scenic lions" in those days. Few people knew of them, and my companion and I were probably the first men to take a rather trying trip, at that time, to see them. I am rather inclined to like forming my own estimates of what is the average of any region of country, by a sight of both its least and most interesting features. But enough of that; my day of "view-hunting," as well as of my companion, are past and gone. This from my journal again: "Of all deserts, which one more strange than a cactus desert? That one extending from where the Rio Virgen crosses the northern boundary line of Arizona, to Sanup plateau, over- looking the Grand canyon, and from the Grand wash, on the west, to the Uinkaret plateau on the east, is as strange as any. Thorn- bearing cacti abound; the barrel and the flat-leaved cactus, and others, are all fearfully armed. There is the Yant, or Spanish bayonet, but the Needle palm, Yucca, or, as more commonly called, the Joshua, are in preponderance. What torches they make, what heat they throw out, and how they crackle and flare! It is just as much a primal instinct to light a fire when out in the wild, as it is a platitude to tell about it.