224 Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 



a letter S (Plate XV). As I was standing on a hill near the middle of 

 the open part of one of the bows or curves and looking northward, I 

 saw that the hill decreased in height to the northward and that the 

 lower hill merged into a ridge which extended straight northward in 

 the middle of the curve becoming gradually lower and lower until it 

 finally became faint and died out a little before it reached the middle 

 of the inner bend of the river. On each side of thcridge the land was 

 nearly flat, but sloped very gently eastward and westward to the river. 

 North of the river on the outer side of the curve was a crescent of ex- 

 ceptionally high bluffs, which forms a conspicuous landmark. Looking 

 at the other ox-bow to the westward, the other portion of the compound 

 curve, it was seen that the central ridge, diminishing in height towards 

 the river, was like the one first observed. The first one mentioned was 

 between one and two miles in length. Apparently these two great bends 

 of the river had remained for a long time in approximately the same 

 position. After the river ceased to lower its bed it slowly eroded the 

 outer curves, and the rains gradually and evenly washed down the high 

 tongues of the bluffs inside of the oblong curves. When the texture 

 of the rock or soil is soft, porous, and nearly uniform, and the surface 

 is being lowered by atmospheric agencies, the slopes are nearly uniform. 

 River bottoms slope toward the rivers, benches slope toward the river 

 bottoms, and plateaus slope from the middle outward. The present 

 example shows most beautifully how the high benches have been re- 

 duced to buttes, hills, and ridges, which gradually die out into a nearly 

 level plain. 



I inferred that probably, through a large part of the deepening of 

 the canon, the curves of the river held approximately the same position 

 which they now hold ; yet scattered over the hills at my feet there was 

 river gravel, showing that at some former time a river, perhaps the 

 Little Missouri when at a much higher level, had flowed in a different 

 course. 



A part of the eastern portion of the flat had been plowed and seeded 

 as an experiment, and Mr. Hanson was cutting oats for fodder. As 

 yet very little farming has been done along the Little Missouri River, 

 though one man, who has a ranch on the river-bottom south of Medora, 

 has for several years raised oats, alfalfa, and millet. Part of the crops, 

 when I saw them, were extremely large. This has encouraged others, 

 and though this has been a country given over exclusively to stock- 

 raising, it is now being rapidly settled and the government land on 

 the upland taken as homesteads. 



