VALLEYS OF WHITE EARTH AND NIOBRARA. 493 



to decay. Domes, towers, minarets and spires may be seen on 

 every side, which assume a great variety of shapes when 

 viewed .in the distance. Not unfrequently the rising or the 

 setting sun will light up these grand old ruins with a wild, 

 strange beauty, reminding one of a city illuminated in the 

 night, when seen from some high point. The harder layers 

 project from the sides of the valley or canyon with such regu- 

 larity that they appear like seats, one above the other, of some 

 vast amphitheater. 



" It is at the foot of these apparent architectural remains 

 that the curious fossil treasures are found. In the oldest beds 

 we find the teeth and jaws of a Hyopotamus,' a river-horse 

 much like the hippopotamus, which must have sported in his 

 pride in the marshes that bordered this lake. So, too, the 

 Titanotherum, a gigantic pachyderm, was associated with a 

 species of hornless rhinoceros. These huge rhinoceroid ani- 

 mals appear at first to have monopolized this entire region, and 

 the plastic, sticky clay of the lowest bed of this basin, in which 

 the remains were found, seems to have formed a suitable bot- 

 tom of the lake in which these thick-skinned monsters could 

 wallow at pleasure." 



Of the fauna of the Niobrara and Loup Fork Valleys, he 

 speaks as follows : " In the later fauna were the remains of a 

 number of species of extinct camels, one of which was of the 

 size of the Arabian camel, a second about two-thirds as large. 

 Not less interesting are the remains of a great variety of forms 

 of the horse family, one of which was about as large as the 

 ordinary domestic animal, and the smallest not more than two 

 or two and a half feet in height, with every intermediate grade 

 in size." 



