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THE MISSOURI RIVER JOURNALS 



149 



all appearance, is a very scanty supply, and there, and 

 there only, they feed, as not one has ever been seen on 

 the bottom or prairie land further than the foot of these 

 most extraordinary hills. In wet weather, no man can 

 climb any of them, and at such times they are greasy, 

 muddy, sliding grounds. Oftentimes when a Bighorn 

 is seen on a hill-top, the hunter has to ramble about for 

 three or four miles before he can approach within gun- 

 shot of the game, and if the Bighorn ever sees his en- 

 emy, pursuit is useless. The tops of some of these hills, 

 and in some cases whole hills about thirty feet high, are 

 composed of a conglomerated mass of stones, sand, and 

 clay, svith earth of various sorts, fused together, and hav- 

 ing a brick-like appearance. In this mass pumice-stone 

 of various shapes and sizes is to be found. The whole is 

 evidently the effect of volcanic action. The bases of 

 some of these hills cover an area of twenty acres or more, 

 and the hills rise to the height of three or four hundred 

 feet, sometimes even to eight hundred or a thousand ; so 

 high can the hunter ascend that the surrounding country is 

 far, far beneath him. The strata are of different colored 

 clays, coal, etc., and an earth impregnated with a salt 

 which appears to have been formed by internal fire or 

 heat, the earth or stones of which I have first spoken in 

 this account, lava, sulphur, salts of various kinds, oxides 

 and sulphates of iron ; and in the sand at the tops of some 

 of the highest hills I have found marine shells, but so 

 soft and crumbling as to fall apart the instant they were 

 exposed to the air. I spent some time over various lumps 

 of sand, hoping to find some perfect ones that would be 

 hard enough to carry back to S':. Louis ; but 't was " love's 

 labor lost," and I regretted exceedingly that only a few 

 fragments could be gathered. I found globular and oval 

 shaped stones, very heavy, apparently composed mostly 

 of iron, weighing from fifteen to twenty pounds ; numbers 

 of petrified stumps from one to three feet in diameter; the 



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