Descriplion of part of Wyoming Territory. 271 



irregularities of the deeply eroded and naked declivities of the more 

 extended terraces. The buttes, therefore, vary in extent from a mere 

 mound, rising slightly above the level of the plains, to hills of varied 

 configuration, reaching to the level of the broader tuttes or terraces. 

 In the course of ages, the wearing away of these has been enormous, , 

 and still coptiuues under the usual atmospheric agencies, while the 

 detritus is spread out on the plains below. 



From the lower plains, the neighboring terraces, when of circum- 

 scribed extent, appear like vast earthwork fortifications, and when 

 evenly preserved on the declivities for a considerable distance, reminds 

 one of long railway embankments. Frequently the terraces are so 

 eroded and traversed by narrow ravines, that they appear as great 

 groups of naked buttes rising from the midst of the plain, or assembled 

 around the horizon, closely facing and flanking the more distant and 

 extended lands, as if to protect .them. Nothing can be more desolate 

 in appearance than some of these vast assemblages of crumbling buttes, 

 destitute of vegetation and traversed by ravines, in which the water- 

 courses in mid-summer are almost all completely dried. To these 

 assemblages of naked buttes, often worn into castellated and fantastic 

 forms, and extending through miles and miles of territory, the early 

 Canadian vovagers gave the name of " Mauvaises Terres." They 

 occur in many localities of the Tertiary formations west of the Miss- 

 ssippi river. 



In wandering through the " jMauvaises Terres," or " Bad Lands," it 

 requires but little stretch of the imagination to think oneself in th.a 

 streets of some vast ruined and deserted city. No scene ever impressed 

 the writer more strongly than the view of one of these Bad Lands. 

 In company with his friends, Drs. Carter and Carson, he made an 

 expedition, in search of fossils, to Dry Creek Canon, about forty miles 

 to the southeast of Fort Bridger. The caiian, or valley, is bounded 

 by high buttes, and contains a meadow of rushes, traversed by a stream 

 which is liable to be dried up in the latter part of the summer, whence 

 the name of the canon. On ascending the butte to the east of -our 

 camp, I found before me another valley, a treeless, barren plain, 

 probably teu miles in width. From the far side of this valley, butte 

 after butte arose and grouped themselves along the horizon, and looked 

 together in the distance like the huge, fortified city of a giant race. 

 Tlie utter desolation of the scene, the dried up water-courses, the 

 absence of any moving object, and the profound silence which pre- 

 vailed produced a feeling that was positively oppressive. When I then 

 thought of the buttes beneath my feet, with their entombed remains of 

 multitudes of -animals forever extinct, and reflected upon the tirru- 



