A Trip on the Prairie. 215 



to us, passing nearly all day in a long flat prairie through 

 which flowed a stream that we supposed to be either the 

 Box Alder or the Little Beaver. In leaving this we 

 had struck some heavy sand-hills, and while pulling the 

 loaded wagon up them one of the team played out com- 

 pletely, and we had to take her out and put in one of the 

 spare saddle-ponies, a tough little fellow. Night came on 

 fast, and the sun was just setting when we crossed the 

 final ridge and came in sight of as singular a bit of coun- 

 try as I have ever seen. The cowboys, as we afterward 

 found, had christened the place " Medicine Buttes." In 

 plains dialect, I may explain, " Medicine" has been adopted 

 from the Indians, among whom it means any thing super- 

 natural or very unusual. It is used in the sense of 

 " magic," or " out of the common." 



Over an irregular tract of gently rolling sandy hills, 

 perhaps about three quarters of a mile square, were scat- 

 tered several hundred detached and isolated buttes or 

 cliffs of sandstone, each butte from fifteen to fifty feet 

 high, and from thirty to a couple of hundred feet across. 

 Some of them rose as sharp peaks or ridges, or as con- 

 nected chains, but much the greater number had flat tops 

 like little table-lands. The sides were perfectly perpen- 

 dicular, and were cut and channelled by the weather into 

 the most extraordinary forms ; caves, columns, battle- 

 ments, spires, and flying buttresses were mingled in the 

 strangest confusion. Many of the caves were worn clear 

 through the buttes, and they were at every height in the 

 sides, while ledges ran across the faces, and shoulders and 

 columns jutted out from the corners. On the tops and 



