Douglass : A Geological Reconnaissance. 253 



cended a long slope toward a bench, the top of which seemed to mount 

 higher and higher as we toiled up its slope. Finally in the growing 

 dusk, having gained the top of the wind-swept bench, I saw to the 

 southward cold, dark mountains, and on all other sides desolate 

 hills and ridges stretching many miles away. After descending a per- 

 ilous hill in the gathering darkness, I reached a little stream, got a 

 warm supper by a roaring campfire and made my bed beneath the 

 open sky and a dense sheltering thicket of willows. All night at short 

 intervals the wind raged furiously, roaring among the willows and 

 lashing their tops, portending a storm, but fortunately for myself and 

 the horses it was not yet quite due. 



The next morning I climbed to the top of the high bench which I 

 had crossed the previous evening. The bench was nearly flat, but 

 sloped northward away from the mountains, the dark, sharp, rugged 

 peaks of which rose into the cold sky a little distance to the southward. 

 Far away to the westward, northward and eastward, as far as the eye 

 could see, with a general slope to the northward, sometimes interrupted 

 by older rocks and mountain-uplifts, were the Tertiary and more 

 recent deposits, like those beneath my feet. At a far lower level, in 

 the distance, toward the lower valley of the Ruby River, stretching like 

 an irregular but comparatively low wall between the Ruby and the 

 Tobacco Root ranges, was the ridge through which the Ruby cuts its 

 lower canon. Through this caiion I had passed the day before on my 

 way to this elevated region. The Snow Crest Range gives one the 

 impression of being a comparatively recent uplift, and of having car- 

 ried upward with it in its elevation the Tertiary deposits, which now 

 climb high on its flanks. 



In viewing from this elevation the Tertiary deposits, which extend 

 far away between mountain ranges, sometimes almost surrounding 

 them, it was realized how at variance with the facts is the theory that 

 during the deposition of these beds, the valleys of the mountains were 

 occupied by separate lakes, which, like small lakes in the mountains 

 at the present time, are gradually being filled with sediment. 



Instead of deposits occupying the isolated valleys, they extend from 

 one valley to another, so that those in the Upper Ruby, Black Tail 

 Deer Creek, Red Rock, Grasshopper, Beaverhead, Big Hole, Deer 

 Lodge, Madison, Gallatin, and Upper Missouri valleys were united, 

 and the Tertiary deposits can be traced almost continuously for hun- 

 dreds of miles, sometimes occupying the lowest depressions and some- 



