144 KANSAS UNIVERSITY QUARTERLY. 



It was in these counties, and in Barber county, that Hay did most of 

 his work, but his descriptions apply in nearly all particulars through 

 the whole formation. The gypsum, alone, becomes less apparent as 

 we go west and south. 



Leaving Liberal, a little town on the Rock Island railroad, in Sew- 

 ard county, and striking directly south to the North Fork of the 

 Canadian river, or Beaver creek, as it is more commonly called, the 

 whole prairie is monotonously level, there being probably not a vari- 

 ation of fifty feet in altitude in the whole twenty-five miles. This fiat 

 is covered with the later Tertiary, so common over the western por- 

 tion of the state. Upon the banks of the creek, the Tertiary thins 

 out to a few feet in thicknes, and the red sandstones and clays of the 

 Triassic peep out from the gullies and rain-washed hill-sides. The 

 valley of the creek is about a mile wide, filled on the north side with 

 shifting sand-hills made up from the decomposed Tertiary sandstone 

 and the drifting sand from the flats on the south, which extend far 

 into Texas. The sand, carried by the prevailing winds in a direction 

 from south of west to east of north, has gradually crossed this valley, 

 and piled against and u])c)n ihe bluffs on the north side, leaving behind 

 a level plain, and an altered river-course. The sand-hills slope gently 

 on the southwest side, and are sharply excavated on the northeast, in 

 some cases covered with stunted sage brush and cottonwoods, but 

 more frequently perfectly bare. 



The Triassic shows a bewildering number of dips and faults, too 

 numerous and complicated to more than find mention in any but the 

 most detailed description. The hard Tertiary grit lies unconformably 

 upon every layer of the Triassic, from the highest to the lowest. It 

 has been largely carried away by erosion and only appears on small, 

 isolated areas, but these show the effects of similar disturbances. 

 The red sandstone of the Trias outcrops in the same peculiarly 

 irregular manner, bluffs from thirty to fifty feet high disappearing 

 within a hundred feet and replaced by Tertiary grit or sandy shales of 

 the lower Triassic. The whole region has evidently been subjected 

 to extensive foldings, both before and since the deposition of the Ter- 

 tiary. In Seward and Meade counties, and the region of the Territory 

 directly south, Beaver creek may be taken as the southern boundary 

 of the Tertiary grit, in a general way, although it appears on the hill- 

 tops further south. In the eastern part of Beaver county, and in 

 Clark and Comanche counties, the boundary of the outcrop moves 

 north nearly to their northern boundaries. As the line of the Ter- 

 tiary retreats, the "red dirt" of the Trias appears in larger and 

 larger beds, worn and eroded, till it presents an appearance in every- 

 thing but color strikingly like the chalk beds along the Smoky Hill 



