BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 657 
solitary smoky-coloured Emberiza. The latter seemed de- 
lighted with our unexpected visit, and followed us for about - 
ten miles, until sunset ; alighting on our hats, or travelling with 
us, by taking a seat on the crupper, or settling alternately on 
some Artemisia bush. Both these creatures probably had lost 
their way as we three had lost ours. Our bad luck, as we 
called it then, turned out good for us, for by that involuntary 
circuit (of about 90 or 100 miles) we evaded a party of ma- 
rauding Shyenne Indians. 
2nd Sub-region.— Masses of bituminous, or simply carbo- 
naceous shale, bearing castle-like cliffs of horizontal sand- 
stone, elevated above the plains; or lower, and capped with 
a heavy layer of brownish ferrugineous loam, commencing at 
the mouths of Big Sioux and Qui-court, and continuing for 
about 900 miles on both sides up the Missouri to Yellow- 
stone river, with a slight easterly inclination. Carbonized 
organic remains of Ammonites and Orthoceratites are strewed 
over the surface.* This and the following sub-region com- 
prise the * Burnt Hills” of Lewis and Clark. 
The declivities fronting the river are clothed with a spare 
but elegant vegetation, and repay the visitor for the desolate 
aspect of the numberless sandbar-islands in the river. Bor- 
dered by the groups of Juniperus Andina (J. tetragona ?) 
which inhabit the deep protected ravines, a slight shrubbery 
of Shephardia argentea, Ribes aureum, and of Rhus trifolio- 
lata, clothe the base of the hills, further up mingles the 
prettiest of the genus Amorpha (A. nana, Nutt.) with dis- 
persed herbaceous plants. Yucca angustifolia, and some 
species of Guttierezia and frutescent Chenopodiacee fringe 
the cliffs above. à 
The most brilliant flowers are those of the Stanleya pinna- 
tifida, Nuttall; it grows in thick clusters, about three feet 
high, on narrow parapets, forming, for the most part, brilliant 
golden-yellow serpentine lines on the hill-sides, visible at the 
distance of half-a-mile, the racemes being sometimes a foot 
* See J. N. Nicollet's Report, for further geological information. 
