18 



hills of varied configuration reaching to the level of the broader buttes or ter- 

 races. In the course of ages the wearing away of these has been enormous 

 and still continues under the usual atmospheric agencies, while the detritus 

 is spread out on the plains below. 



From the lower plains the neighboring terraces, when of circumscribed 

 extent, appear like vast earth-work fortifications, and when evenly preserved on 

 the declivities for a considerable distance remind one of "long railway embank- 

 ments. Frequently the terraces are so extensively eroded and traversed by 

 narrow ravines that they appear as great groups of naked buttes rising from 

 the midst of the plain, or assembled around the horizon closely facing and 

 flanking the more distant and extended lands as if to protect them. Nothing 

 can be more desolate in appearance than some of these vast assemblages of 

 crumbling buttes, destitute of vegetation and traversed by ravines, in which 

 the water-courses in midsummer are almost all completely dried. To these 

 assemblages of naked buttes, often worn into castellated and fantastic forms, 

 and extending through miles and miles of territory, the early Canadian 

 voyagcurs gave the name of "Mauvaises Terres.'' They occur in many local- 

 ities of the Tertiary formations west of the Mississippi River. 



In wandering through the " Mauvaises Terres," or " Bad Lands,'' it requires 

 but little stretch of the imagination to think oneself in the streets of some 

 vast ruined and deserted city. No scene ever impresed the writer more 

 strongly than the view of one of these Bad Lands. In company with his 

 friends, Drs. Carter and Corson, he made an expedition in search of fossils 

 to Dry Creek Canon,* about forty miles to the southeast of Fort Bridger. 

 The canon, or valley, is bounded by high buttes, and contains a meadow of 

 rushes, traversed by a stream which is liable to be dried up in the latter part 

 of the summer, whence the name of the canon. On ascending the butte to the 

 east of our camp, I found before me another valley, a treeless barren plain, 

 probably ten miles in width. From the far side of this valley butte after 

 butte arose and grouped themselves along the horizon, and looked together 

 in the distance like the huge fortified city of a giant race. The utter desola- 

 tion of the scene, the dried-up water-courses, the absence of any moving 



* The same name is so frequently applied to different places as to lead to consider- 

 able confusion. When I speak of Dry Creek Cafion, I refer to a locality forty miles 

 from Fort Bridger; and when Dry Creek is named, it refers to another locality ten miles 

 from Fort Bridger. 



