A Little-Known Region in Northwestern Montana. 193 
expecting to reach camp that evening. We started on at 6 A. M., and at 
10:30 rode into camp and ordered dinner. 
We were now not more than eight miles from the large glacier else¬ 
where mentioned, and I was eager to visit it. But travel in this region 
is indescribably difficult; we had spent four days in the side trip I have 
just described, onr rations were nearly gone, and we had yet nearly a 
hundred miles to go before we could reach our base of supplies. It was 
therefore plainly evident that we must move on and leave this most at¬ 
tractive region, in the hope that at some future time fortune may be 
more kind. 
Mud Creek .— Our route now was down the valley of Mud Creek to the 
north fork of the Flathead. This stream, Mud Creek, flows between 
steep rocky walls from 1,500 to 2,000 feet high. They gradually grow 
less precipitous and the valley widens as we descend. The lower portion 
of the valley has been covered with a thick growth of pines. In the 
winter avalanches sweep down the steep slopes on either side and to¬ 
wards the bottom carry everything before them; not a stick or a stone 
is left. The debris thus accumulated is hurled into the bed of the stream 
and in some cases permanent dams have been thus made and lakes 
formed. Some of these have in the lapse of time become marshes stretch¬ 
ing clear across the valley. These marshes are soft and miry for pack 
animals, hence the name Mud Creek. The existing lakes are half full of 
the slowly decaying trunks of the pines swept into them. A great mass 
of trees, earth, stones and snow, the remains of an avalanche of the pre¬ 
vious winter still lay at the foot of one of the many wide swaths cut 
through the pines, a silent but eloquent witness of the destroying work 
of the snow. 
Flathead Valley .— The great Flathead valley, although deeply eroded, 
is not a valley of erosion, but is a good example of a synclinal valley. It 
is a deep trough between the Rocky Mountain range on the east and the 
high ranges to the west. Its character will be seen when it is stated 
that if a line be measured from the summit of the Rockies to the Flat- 
head valley, and another an equal distance out to the plains eastward, 
the elevation of the point on the plains will be found to be from 1,000 to 
2,500 feet higher than the corresponding point in the Flathead valley. 
The same is true of the great Columbia-Kootanie valley of British Co¬ 
lumbia. Dense forests of pine, spruce, hemlock, etc., crowd the valley 
of the Flathead and those of its tributaries on the east down nearly to 
Flathead lake. Here on the prairie-like openings a few ranches have 
been established. 
GEOLOGICAL NOTES. 
The plains formation. — A large portion of the beds forming the sur¬ 
face of this portion of the plains I judged to be Laramie. This conclu¬ 
sion is based only on the lithological character of the beds, as no fossils 
13—A. & L. 
