474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



valley, where the fire is nearest the surface, the entire superstratum 

 breaks up and crumbles to ruin. When, after a summer storm, the 

 flood comes down the valley, shoots into the crevices, and runs along 

 the fissures, something like an explosion takes place. On every side 

 volumes of steam ascend, but the fire is not extinguished. The loosened 

 earth is much of it swept away, and a deep gulch forms between the 

 ridges, and so the air comes freely to the fire, which might otherwise 

 be smothered in its own ruin. Meanwhile the hearts of the hills them- 

 selves are baked like tiles in a close kiln, and while the fire would seem 

 to hasten erosion, as in some places it certainly does, yet the metamor- 

 phism accomplished tends in the opposite direction, and is efficient in 

 proportion to the completeness of the change. 



And so the work goes on ; one bed of lignite after another takes 

 fire, one butte after another becomes the cover of a kiln, a furnace, 

 and the whole country is transformed. I say the work goes on ; bet- 

 ter, has gone on, for it is nearly done. Glowing or smoldering through 

 ages past, now hidden in darkness, now breaking forth to light, these 

 secret fires have been burning, burning like a hidden fever, until the 

 fair face of Nature has become an arid desert. 



Thus the Bad Lands, as we know them, are the results of the ac- 

 tion of two opposing elements, the water and the fire. Of these two 

 the first had doubtless acted alone long before the second entered at 

 all into the problem of disintegration. These level tops bespeak a for- 

 mer continuous level plain. More than this : into the highest of the 

 buttes we may trace the same strata which make up the lower hills. 

 The level must at one time have been higher still than we had first 

 supposed. The changes of the past are enormous as compared with 

 anything shown by the present, or even possible in the future of these 

 strata. Owing to the peculiar nature of the strata, their uniformity 

 and lack of solidity, the erosion has produced effects unique, and to 

 these the fire has brought permanence and stability. Far as the coal- 

 beds extend erosion has been or is liable to be arrested, and the coun- 

 try doomed to infertility. But the coal is not universally present. 

 Many places are free from it entirely, and here erosion may continue 

 unchecked its peaceful processes until all is beaten down to the com- 

 mon plain. In other places the coal takes fire in but isolated hills, and 

 these become permanent while all else is reduced to prairie. And now 

 we remember that away to the east the plains sometimes show a soli- 

 tary hill, whose sides, reddening beneath the sparse grass, and whose 

 summit, glowing in the sunshine, betray its origin. 



