224 Mountain Sheep. 



route lay through the heart of the Bad Lands, but of 

 course the country was not equally rough in all parts. 

 There were tracts of varying size, each covered with a 

 .tangled mass of chains and peaks, the buttes in places 

 reaching a height that would in the East entitle them to be 

 called mountains. Every such tract was riven in all direc- 

 tions by deep chasms and narrow ravines, whose sides 

 sometimes rolled off in gentle slopes, but far more often 

 rose as sheer cliffs, with narrow ledges along their fronts. 

 A sparse growth of grass covered certain portions of these 

 lands, and on some of the steep hillsides, or in the canyons, 

 were scanty groves of coniferous evergreens, so stunted by 

 the thin soil and bleak weather that many of them were 

 bushes rather than trees. Most of the peaks and ridges, 

 and many of the valleys, were entirely bare of vegetation, 

 and these had been cut by wind and water into the 

 strangest and most fantastic shapes. Indeed it is difficult, 

 in looking at such formations, to get rid of the feeling that 

 their curiously twisted and contorted forms are due to 

 some vast volcanic upheavals or other subterranean forces ; 

 yet they are merely caused by the action of the various 

 weathering forces of the dry climate on the different strata 

 of sandstones, clays, and marls. Isolated columns shoot 

 up into the air, bearing on their summits flat rocks like 

 tables ; square buttes tower high above surrounding de- 

 pressions, which are so cut up by twisting gullies and low 

 ridges as to be almost impassable ; shelving masses of sand- 

 stone jut out over the sides of the cliffs ; some of the 

 ridges, with perfectly perpendicular sides, are so worn 

 away that they stand up like gigantic knife blades ; and 



