PROF. BERTHOUD. EXPLORATIONS IN IDAHO AND MONTANA. 83 



June 27'ni, 1879. — Regular Mp:eting. 



Mr. W. H. Pratt, Vice President, in the chair. Seven members 

 present. 



Rev. J. 1). King, Etlg-artown, Mass., was elected a corresponding- 

 member. 



The foHowing j)aper was read : 



Exi)loratioii.s in Idaho and Montana in 1878. 



BY PROF. E. L. KERTIIOL'I). 



In I.SIS 1 made an extended exphiration of tlie Territories of 

 Idalio and Montana. This included not only the instrumental part 

 of a thorough railway survey, Init also a (U'itical examination of the 

 natural au<l artificial pi'oductions of that region embraced lietween 

 British America on the n<jrth and Ogden, Utah, on the south, and 

 from the head of the Yellowstone River on the east to the valley 

 of Hell Gate and Wisdom River on tlie west, a region we found 

 replete with the most interesting natural scenery and the most 

 striking objects that it has ever been our fortune to witness. 



Without undue egotism, I really believe that for varied, rare 

 and beautiful sceiiery, for a full exhibition of all the abnormal 

 phenomena of fire, aii and water, this portion of our republic ex- 

 ceeds any similar extent in any other region under the sun. Mon- 

 tana Territory is a land full of wonders, and, with Idaho Territory, 

 they seem to form an area of surface where the former energies, so 

 potently exerted in past geological ageSj have not yet found a rest. 

 The cosmographers and philosophers of the Middle Ages were 

 wont to ascribe many phenomena, many geognostic facts, to the 

 " j)lastic eifects of Nature," as if the earth had in itself some free 

 agency power to control its phenomena. Were this so, they could 

 have found some color to this fancy in the variety of natural ob- 

 jects of nature's energies so liberally found in these two Territo- 

 ries. 



Idaho Territory is a veritable " Phlegraean Field." My un- 

 known friends of the Academy can imagine a vast flat plain, 

 covered from the foot of the mountain ranges of Eastern Idaho for 

 several hvindred miles west with an uniform close covering of sage 

 brush — the Artemisia tridentata of botanists, or, as the Canadian 

 voyagers three quarters of a century since called it, '•'• absinthe.'' ' This 

 gives an uniform dull gray tint of inconceivable melancholy to 



