[The Romance of the Colorado River by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh]@TWC D-Link book
The Romance of the Colorado River

CHAPTER III
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The erosive and corrasive power of water being the chief land sculptors, it is evident that there will be a continual wearing down of the faces of the bounding cliffs.
The softer beds will be cut away faster than the harder, and where these underlie the harder the latter will be undermined and fall.

Every canyon is always widening at its top and sides, through the action of rain, frost, and wind, as well as deepening through the action of its flowing stream.

EROSION is this power which carves away the cliffs, and CORRASION the one which saws at the bottom, the latter term, in geological nomenclature, meaning the cutting power of running water.* This cutting power varies according to the declivity and the amount of sediment carried in suspension.

It is plain that a stream having great declivity will be able to carry more sediment than one having little, and in a barren country would always be highly charged with sand, which would cut and scour the bed of the channel like a grindstone.

As Dutton says, a river cuts, however, only its own width, the rest of a canyon being the "work of the forces of erosion, the wind, frost, and rain." That is why we have canyons.


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