THE RED VALLEY, 137 



the streams sink in tlie canons of the Carboniferous, but many of tliem rise 

 ag-ain in the Red Valley in unexpected places as spring-s or jjools of wat(;r. 

 They never, however, become again running- streams. 



Though the surface of the valley is generally undulating, with frequent 

 wide level expanses, it is often deeply cut and scored by ravines and chan- 

 nels, and these are especially numerous near the main streams of the Hills, 

 where the excavated and washed surfaces have an exceedingly bare and 

 desolate appearance. As has been aptly described by Colonel Dodge, 

 "sometimes it is really a smooth, beautiful valley; in other places it is a 

 jumble of low, broken red hills, cut by innumerable ravines and looking 

 like a Viry-inian 'old field' on a largfe scale." 



Along the eastern border the valley is narrower than elsewhere, and 

 all the principal lines of drainage run across it, issuing from the monoclinal 

 ridge of Paleozoic rocks at the west, and immediately entering the Creta- 

 ceous rampart at the east. At the southern end the drainage crosses in the 

 same manner, but the dip is gentler and the valley is broad. At the south- 

 west it is again narrow, but it has a con.siderable drainage of its own. 

 Following its course from Dodge Pass northward, one first ascends for 

 six or eight miles a water-wav that in some seasons must carrv a large 

 volume and then descends through a grass}- prairie to the east fork of 

 Beaver Creek, up which he travels for eight miles without leaving the Red 

 Valley. Thence to Inyan Kara he finds the drainage longitudinal, though 

 with no running water, and he crosses but a single divide between the two 

 forks of the Cheyenne. Approaching Inj-an Kara he finds the valley 

 broader, and it is so broad beyond and so complicated by igneous uplifts 

 that its typical character is lost. At the north beyond the Bear Lodge 

 range it resumes its familiar form and for twenty miles it is the broad and 

 open valley of Redwater Creek. 



A small but interesting area of the red clay is exhibited on the Belle 

 Fourche near Bear Lodge. Here, as also on lower Red Canon Creek and 

 in places on the Redwater, the clay has so large a proportion of sand that 

 it becomes a shaly red sandstone, and instead of forming sloping and 

 rounded surfaces it stands in sharp cliifs. 



