1876.] The Little Missouri * Bad Lands.” 215 
eye catches little else than the bare, more or less metamorphosed 
shales. Each hardened band forming a considerable check to 
the eroding forces, the country presents a series of narrow ter- 
races; these, being covered with a scanty growth of vegetation, 
form little plats and strips of green that pleasantly relieve the 
otherwise unbroken expanse of barrenness. Such ascene of wild- 
ness and desolation seems like a glimpse, as it were, of a half- 
formed world, unfit as yet for the habitation of man or for his 
uses, 
A more extensive view of the Little Missouri ‘‘ Bad Lands ” is 
obtainable from the: Sentinel Buttes, two high points situated 
on the western border of this remarkable region, and reaching an 
elevation of about six hundred feet above the Little Missouri. 
The horizontal position of the strata composing these elevations 
shows what a vast amount of material has been removed from the 
surrounding region by the slow action of denuding forces. The 
country presents, as we look eastward from these buttes, an al- 
most continuous expanse of low, red-capped ridges and buttes, the 
prevailing red color being relieved only by bands of yellowish- 
brown and gray tints formed by the unaltered shales exposed in 
the deeply cut ravines. In this direction the view consists almost 
wholly of bad lands, —a vast stretch of undulating, verdureless 
red surface, extending as far as the eye can reach, only the naked 
crests of the distant, red-capped buttes and ridges being visi- 
le. Itis a scene not easily forgotten, so utterly barren, and yet 
so wild and picturesque. Its desolateness is doubtless greatly 
heightened by the contrast of green, rolling prairie which meets 
e eye when turned in the opposite direction. In looking north- 
Ward or southward we have on the one hand a beautiful prairie 
landscape, broken only here and there by a low, red-capped 
utte or sharp ridge, while on the other is a boundless expanse 
of naked red mounds and ridges, — billows, as it were, of a fiery 
sea, — the transition from the one to the other being abrupt and 
strongly marked. ; 
e have here before us but a portion of one of the numerous 
belts of these peculiar bad lands that occupy vast areas of East- 
ern Dakota and Western Montana. The Little Missouri “ Bad 
Lands,” with a breadth varying from twenty to thirty miles, ex- 
tend for hundreds of miles along the stream from which they de- 
"ve their name. Other equally remarkable areas appear at in- 
tervals along the Missouri, from the vicinity of Fort Berthold 
nearly to the Judith River, or for a distance of fully five hundred 
