THE UPPER MISSOURI RIVER SYSTEM. 595 



duller parts of the country and make only a meager record of them. 

 Another reason for this has been that it is in the region of country 

 about the sources of these rivers that the most profitable mining and 

 agricultural enterprises have been conducted, and large and thriving 

 settlements, even cities, have grown up there, unaided by railroad con- 

 nections, and communicating with the civilized world by overland 

 routes — not along the river- valley, but across the country from the 

 south, uniting this region with the Salt Lake Basin. It is thus that 

 Helena, Bozeman, Virginia City, and, to a large extent. Fort Benton, 

 now a thriving town, have come into existence, cut off, as it were, on 

 the east, with the great valleys through which the waters of this re- 

 gion are led back to the inhabited parts of the country in a condition 

 akin to unexplored. This was especially the case with the Yellow- 

 stone Valley prior to the construction of the Northern Pacific Rail- 

 road. 



The Yellowstone, from its rapid current of about three miles per 

 hour, its frequent sand-bars, shoals, rapids, and other obstructions, is 

 scarcely navigable at all ; while the Upper Missouri, though navigable 

 with great difficulty in high water as far as Fort Benton, or even to 

 its Great Falls, forty miles above that point, possesses a sad history 

 of wrecks, disasters, and failures. 



The Yellowstone and Upper Missouri Rivers flow in an easterly 

 direction, nearly parallel to each other and at a distance of about one 

 hundred miles apart, at least for the lower half of their course. Above 

 the Musselshell, which stretches nearly across the intervening space, 

 the country is more or less mountainous, the fall of the water is more 

 rapid, the bottom usually gravelly or rocky, the valleys narrow, and 

 the water clear except in times of flood. Below the Musselshell of 

 the Missouri and the Big Horn of the Yellowstone, neai'ly opposite, 

 this Mesopotamian region consists of an elevated plain wholly desti- 

 tude of arborescent vegetation. Its elevation, though not sufficient 

 to be called mountainous, is considerable, and is formed by several 

 distinct rises or terraces. The summit is a level plain, and contains 

 large lakes or marshes in which wild-geese and other water-fowls in 

 immense numbers breed and rear their young. From this plateau long 

 valleys, sometimes of considerable width, descend to the rivers, carrying 

 streams of water which, in some cases, persist throughout the year. 

 The highest part, or divide proper, between the rivers is not central 

 but is nearer the Missouri, which has rugged banks on its south side, 

 with some of the features of the Dakota Bad Lands. Toward the 

 Yellowstone the slope is gradual, and the terraces become lower and 

 lower until the river- valley proper is reached. The right bank of the 

 Yellowstone for most of this distance is similar to the right bank of 

 the Missouri, and toward its mouth the country lying south of the 

 river is not to be distinguished from the true Bad Lands of the Little 

 Missouri adjacent to it. On the other hand, whatever wide flats or 



