The Black-Tail Deer. 145 



which the banks rise at an angle of sixty degrees to the 

 tops of the enclosing ridges. 



The faces of the terraced cliffs and sheer crags are bare 

 of all but the scantiest vegetation, and where the Bad Lands 

 are most rugged and broken the big-horn is the only game 

 found. But in most places the tops of the buttes, the sides 

 of the slopes, and the bottoms of the valleys are more or 

 less thickly covered with the nutritious grass which is the 

 favorite food of the black-tail. 



Of course, the Bad Lands grade all the way from those 

 that are almost rolling in character to those that are so 

 fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color as to 

 seem hardly properly to belong to this earth. If the 

 weathering forces have not been very active, the ground 

 will look, from a little distance, almost like a level plain, 

 but on approaching nearer, it will be seen to be crossed by 

 straight-sided gullies and canyons, miles in length, cutting 

 across the land in every direction and rendering it almost 

 impassable for horsemen or wagon-teams. If the forces at 

 work have been more intense, the walls between the dif- 

 ferent gullies have been .cut down to thin edges, or broken 

 through, leaving isolated peaks of strange shape, while 

 the hollows have been channelled out deeper and deeper ; 

 such places show the extreme and most characteristic Bad 

 Lands formation. When the weathering has gone on 

 further, the angles are rounded off, grass begins to 

 grow, bushes and patches of small trees sprout up, 

 water is found in places, and the still very rugged 

 country becomes the favorite abode of the black-tail. 



During the daytime, these deer lie quietly in their 



