, 1886-02-13
rae eufEALo RANGE OF MoNrANA
A Gray and Tossed-Up Country Full of
Fasoinntion-What tine May See.

A Gray and Tosred-Up Country Full of
Fasoination-what ons May See.
To the stranger in u land the first
essential Is a general idea of the country
10 be gained from some point of COM
handing view. Yonder chalk butte,
some four miles away, rising 500 feet,
and looking from the distance like the
great pyramid of Gizeh. will answer Ia
purpose. Into the saddle we swing and
away we go at a gallop over sagebrush
and cactus, over buffalo and gramma
grass, down r~avines, washouts and
gorges, over DOGGY creeks and up steep
slopes, and at last we reach the base Of
the butte. Its sides look steep. almost
precipitous, and you are dismayed, for
you would not think Of leading an east
ern horse up there, to say nothing Of at
tempting TO ride. But, never bother
about the steepness. Give your horse
his head, hold on by his name, and II he
needs urging do it with the spur.
Waste no breath with vain cluckings or
$50 along" These horses understand
nothing by your voices. The only Ian
guage they know is the spur and the
bit. II you wish TO stop draw on the
thANt' aNAh'f - ~ ~ hAtahf ACh'h hAH'
with the spur; IL to turn, press the fiat
Of the rein on the side of the neck. Up
from the bunch grass that fringcs the
base, following ~diagonally al old ante
lope runway, owe rocks, patches Of
prickly pear and sagebrush, we move
up and around the butte until at last
we reach the top.
The sun has risen and sheds a flood Of
light upon as strange a view ms ever
eastern eyes beheld. About you is a
wild and tumbled sea Of land, beaten,
tossed, and twisted into n thousand fam
tastic shapes. You are on the division
line between the Bad Lands and the
high rolling prairies, yet the general
character of the country is that of the
former. Its appearance is that of the
Titans' battle ground. Born in volcanic
agony, nurtured in convulsion, scourged
by fire, water, glacier, and gravel, it
beats the impress Of them all. A weird
and desolate land, it pleases and charms
the eye by the very relics of the power
which originally destroyed it. Strange
and fantastic buttes, some pyramid
shaped, others reared liked a cone and
others perpendicular and inaccessible
cylinders Of white clay, are scattered
p~romiscuously about you. Occasionally
there is n well-dehned chain Of them
running for miles; yet oftener from the
flat surface of the prairie they lift them
selves up solitary and alone, looking as
though some mighty i%nundation had
drifted them there.
In the valleys between them, extend
ing sometimes for miles, are enormous
gulches with perpendicular sides quilted
out as by floods. The effect Of water is
apparent everywhere. The butte you
are standing upon is guttered and
washed on its sides as though an ocean
had burst above it and rolled down into
the tremendous gulch at its base. Look
where your horse is treading and you
will find sea shells innumerable, and
any and everywhere throughout the
eastern part of the territory,
on the buttes, in the caves, in the val
leys, you will find the action of water
and the deposits of the sea, proving con-
clusively that at one time this whole
country was the bed Of an inland ocean.
The minor buttes, scanned and rounded
by water, look as though they were
slowly melting away, and resemble
nothing so much as huge, half-melted
icebergs. Yet upon perpendicular sides,
where the strata is apparent, will be
seen layers of Ignite coal, some of them
burning under ground; clays of strange
and variegated colors, not unlike those
seen upon the cliffs OF Martha's vineyard,
and terra-cotta colored freaks showing
the action of fire.
You look about in vain for vegetation,
life. and masses Of color. There is no
timber save the few cottonwoods that
struggling, stunted pines that cling
about the tops OF the buttes. The dull
gray sage, the half yellow and already
curing gramma grass, with here and
there a green patch of bunch grass.
showing the presence of some subter-
ranean spring, is all that appears. There
are no lakes or marshes, no low lands or
swamp lands. The great majority Of
the creek bods are dry and overgrown
with bushes, and those that have water
are DOGGY and muddy with alkali. In
the long summer and autumn months
the only wildly bright thing seen hero
is the sky overhead. The air is 30 clear
and pure that it does not obscure the
light, and If you but turn around you
may see fifty miles in any direction.
But whichever way you look the same
gray desolation. the same wild disorder
Of nature appears.
II you would wish to increase thu
idea Of loneliness, fancy once riding to-
ward any point Of the compass for fifty
or 100 miles without seeing n trace Of
humanity and you will begin to realize
that you are in n vnst Wilderness. Il
has not always appeared so desolate as
now. for animal life occupied in once.
1t was but a few years ago that from
this very butte you could have looked
forth and seen herds of buffaloes moving
and circling in enormous masses. They
covered the ground with their numbers,
and the rumble of their stampede was
like the roll Of distant thunder. But
their fave ito haunt knows them no
more. You see the carcasses Of the
dead whitening in the sun by the hun
dreds; but of the living not one re-
mains. Yonder are their trails, still
winding around the buttes and through
the valleys, but the grass is growing in
them, and only the Indians pony breaks
the nswly-made sod.-Montana Cor.
New York Sun.