The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-09-06

projections or as abutments of various
buttes give point to Mr., Horace Rublee's
name of "HOop-skirt canon" to one of the
gorges where this arrangement predomin-
ated.
Our wagons and ponies elm bed one of the
highest buttes, and from its summit saw the
widest and wierdest possible view. The
valley through which we had threaded our
way was lost among the thousand motley
heaps which looked like the many-hued
tents of some great cavalcade. FIat-topped
ridges stretched away with black bands OF
unburned Ignite between bands OF clay.
Clusters fatal trail to the Rosebud lay be-
tween us and the river; black masses OF the
iron clay scorie cropped out among the
creeping Juniper, the prickly pear and sage
brush of the hillsides which stretched away
in tiattopped terraces
On either side of the gulches which the
meteOric waters had worn, we traced the
same bands OF color The sands clays and
Goals have never been upturned by noun
tain making, but the sedimentary strata are
as they were laid in the warm seas of the
early tertiary. The hills and buttes, the cones
and pyramids, the domes, castles and tur-
reted walls rising from fifty to nearly
thousand feet, are all the work OF erosion.
Water has played some strange freaks here;
it is gradually finishing to the very base OF
the Rockies the work which has been. so
smoothly done on the prairies from the Mis-
sissppi west TO this region.
The fire has burned the perishable clays
into stone, and SO made permanent the
forms which the water has sculptured. The
ground was dry-not drop of water in the
gulches for ten miles; there was an ample
growth of low shrubs-willows, box elders,
choke cherry and the like along the gulches,
and few birds, chipmucks and insects are
seen. The dry bunch grass affords nutriment
to cattle, which are here few in number, as
compared with those an eastern farm will
support. 1 should want about forty acres to
each head OF stock in the region we tray
ersed, although this is among the toughest
parts of the Pyramid Park region. But the
remains of the spring flowers are abundant
on their withered stalks. The Sioux made
a living here. and Pyramid Park is favorite
stopping-off place for the hunter. In the
warmer and wetter weather of the times
when these cretaceous Goals were formed
there were great inland seas through this
region; and great forests of trees very like
those of the present forests of Indiana, were
common through Dakota and Montana, as is
shown by the petrified stumps of forest trees
scattered about these areas, and by the leaves
of many species, whose forms are perfectly
preserved in the beds of clay baked by the
burning Ignite. Tropical laurels and figs
now limited to Florida; the sequoia, now only
known as the big trees of California, and the
trees of our common Indiana woods, all
had common meeting ground and luXurl-
ant growth i'll the early Dakota OF the ter
tiary world. 1t is a curious fact that many
of the genera of trees then abundant, are
now represented by only one or two species.
We have now but two kinds of sassafras one
sycamore, one tulip tree yellow POPLAR and
one sweet gum. But these are only the sam
pie species of genera which. in tertiary
times, had many species. The old things have
passed away-the immense forests of pines
an nd St M
mammals-all things have become new. The
sheep, horses and cattle of Asia take the
place of the bighorn, the elk and American
bison just as these replaced those earlier types,
whose fossil remains Cope and Marsh have
found in their vast expenses. The trapper
and hunter have contested the ground with
the Indians, and these again are now dis
placed by the ranchmen and the agricultur-
rist, who, with cunning hand, leads the noun
tain streams into the valleys, and with the
clover and timothy sod of Europe, replaces
the turf formed of sage brush and buffalo
grass.
Lastly comes the railroad, bringing to the
wild West the necessities and luXurles
deemed indispensable in the East or rather,
as is the case with the Northern Pacific, the
advance guard and former of civilization,
scattering the wild beasts and savage tribes.
carrying the strength, beauty and virtue of
the East into and through the West. At
least so your correspondent thought when
returned from the burning mine and seated
in the Pullman dining-car, we we're once out
of the Bad Lands and speeding at the rate of
500 miles day along the valley of the Vel
lowstone, where, from the time of Lewis and
Clark's expedition, in 1906, to the present
year no white man had travelled in either
safety or comfort Surely the railroad is
great and conquereth all things. A. W. B.