1876.] The Little Missouri “ Bad Lands.” 209 
the strangest vistas the continent affords. We look down upon 
a broad valley studded with detached, nearly bare, conical, pyram- 
idal, and rectangular mounds, one hundred to several hundred 
feet in height, and a few yards to many hundred yards in length. 
All are similarly capped with a stratum of bright red, indurated 
clay, which on closer examination proves to have been metamor- 
Phosed by heat, and to be mixed with cinders and other mineral 
substances that seem to have had a volcanic origin. The mounds 
themselves are made up of variegated shales, horizontally dis- 
posed, which, seen in section in the nearly vertical sides of the 
mounds, appear as parallel bands of yellow, brown, green, gray, 
black, and other tints, surmounted with red. This strange pan- 
orama extends for many miles, and as we gaze upon it for the 
first time we soon cease to wonder that General Sully, in his 
march through this region in 1864, should have likened it to “ hell 
with the fires out,” as he is currently reported to have done. 
The trail we have chosen fortunately leads us through the 
very heart of this interesting country, so that the experiences of 
a single day even would be sufficient to give us considerable 
familiarity with the varied phenomena of a locality that may be 
taken as a fair illustration of the remarkable topography of an 
extensive region. By a difficult and winding descent we reach 
the valley of Davis Creek, through which we are to find our way 
to the Little Missouri. Our interest in our surroundings .con- 
stantly increases, as at every step some new feature, noticeable 
for its picturesque effect or as illustrative of some geological 
force, attracts our attention. The mounds and ridges increase in 
height, their rounded summits still capped with bright pink 
shale, and almost verdureless. Red bands are also seen at inter- 
vals in the sides of these mounds, these bands being composed of 
the Same baked, reddened clay as that covering the summits, 
with senerally a thin layer of scoriaceous-material at the bottom 
each red band. Although traces of fire are so evident, the 
force that has given the country its present broken character 
as been the gentle action of water. The strata everywhere pre- 
Serve their almost perfectly horizontal position, these buttes and 
sharp, narrow ridges being but the remains of strata that once 
filled the country to a higher level. than even the tops of the 
highest buttes now standing. By the slow process of aqueous 
*rosion have the soft strata of sands and clays been removed, 
and the country scored to the depth of hundreds of feet. 
But other forces have been at work. Heat of great intensity, 
“== RO, 4, 4 
