492 BUFFALO LAND. 



winds. Here, as well as on the Laramie plains, the buffalo 

 grazed in great herds; and here the Ute hunters, from some 

 hidden canyons, dashed down among them on their trained and 

 fleet ponies, shooting their arrows with unerring aim on all 

 sides, and having such glorious sport as kings might court and 

 envy. The Indians are now gone from this valley, and the 

 buffalo nearly so. On the two million acres in this valley not 

 twenty head of cattle graze. 



" This great park, splendidly watered by the three forks of 

 the Platte, and by a hundred small streams that drain these 

 lofty mountains of their snows and rains — rich in all kinds of 

 nutritious grasses, plentifully supplied with timber; on the 

 tertiary coal fields, with iron, copper, lead, and gold — has not 

 one real settler. There are a few miners, but where there 

 should be flocks and herds of sheep and cattle without number, 

 there is only the wild game — the elk, antelope, and deer." 



THE VALLEYS OF THE WHITE EARTH AND NIOBRARA. 



These streams are branches of the Missouri — the one mainlv 

 in Dakota Territory, and the other in Nebraska. The fol- 

 lowing graphic paragraphs concerning them are from Hayden 

 again : 



" I have spent many days exploring this region (the White 

 Earth Valley) when the thermometer was 112° in the shade, 

 and there was no water suitable for drinking purposes within 

 fifteen miles. But it is only to the geologist that this place 

 can have any permanent attraction. He can wind his way 

 through the wonderful canyons among some of the grandest 

 ruins i 1 the world. Indeed, it resembles a gigantic city fallen 



