22 THE WHITE RIVER BADLANDS 



panying intrusions of igneous rocks portend widespread 

 changes, the shallowing sea slips away and fresh water 

 marsh-lands and deltas prevail. The Tertiary comes and 

 with the close of its earlier divisions the White River bad- 

 land formations begin to be deposited. Barriers somewhere 

 are let down and a great horde of animals higher in type 

 than any known before begins to appear. Here in the fore- 

 ground gently flowing streams push their muddy way 

 through reedy marshlands and vigorous forests and furnish 

 a lazy playground for countless turtles and occasional 

 crocodiles. In favored recesses groups of rhinoceroses may 

 be seen, some heavy of bulk and water loving, others grace- 

 ful and preferring dry land. Little fleet-footed ancestral 

 horses with names as long as their legs nibble the grass on 

 the hillsides or, by means of their spreading three-toed feet, 

 trot unhindered across the muddy flats, the nearest restrain- 

 ing rider being more than a million years away. Here and 

 there we see a group of predaceous dogs and not infrequent- 

 ly do we get a glimpse of a ferocious tiger-like cat. On the 

 higher ridges, even far within the distant hills and moun- 

 tains six horned herbivores reveal their inquisitive pose 

 and perhaps anon, like the antelope, show their puffs of 

 white as they scamper from the nearing presence of some 

 stealthy foe. But the "reigning plutocrat" is the titan- 

 othere. In great numbers we see his majestice form as he 

 moves among his kin and crops at his leisure the coarse 

 grasses of the lowlands. Here and there are beavers and 

 gophers and squirrels busy with their toil and their play, and 

 hedgehogs and moles and swine and deer and tapirs and 

 camels, and many other creatures too strange to mention 

 without definition. Although the Badlands as we now 

 know them were until recently little frequented by man ex- 

 cept in favored places, do not think the country was in the 

 ages gone by a barren waste or a place of solitude. To all 

 these animals it was home. Here they fought for food and 

 life and supremacy. To them the sun shone, the showers 

 came, the birds sang, the flowers bloomed, and stately trees 

 gave convenient shade to the rollicking young of many a 

 creature. 



But "everlasting hills' have their day and rivers do not 

 flow on forever. These animals, under a Guiding Provi- 

 dence, having inherited the more essential characters of 



