The Black-Tail Deer 157 



banks rise at an angle of sixty degrees to the tops 

 of the inclosing 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 approach- 

 ing 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 different gullies have been cut 

 down to thin edges, or broken through, leaving 

 isolated peaks of strange shape, while the hollows 

 have been channeled 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 



