io HUNTING TRIPS 



ing-grounds, now roaiaed over by the count- 

 less herds of long-horned cattle. The north- 

 ern portion of this belt is that which has been 

 most lately thrown open to the whites ; and it 

 is with this part only that we have to do. 



The northern cattle plains occupy the basin 

 of the Upper Missouri ; that is, they occupy 

 all of the land drained by the tributaries of 

 that river, and by the river itself, before it 

 takes its long trend to the southeast. They 

 stretch from the rich wheat farms of Central 

 Dakota to the Rocky Mountains, and south- 

 ward to the Black Hills and the Big Horn 

 chain, thus including all of Montana, North- 

 ern Wyoming, and extreme Western Da- 

 kota. The character of this rolling, broken, 

 plains country is everywhere much the same. 

 It is a high, nearly treeless region, of light 

 rainfall, crossed by streams which are some- 

 times rapid torrents and sometimes merely 

 strings of shallow pools. In places it 

 stretches out into deserts of alkali and sage 

 brush, or into nearly level prairies of short 

 grass, extending for many miles without a 



