Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-11-21
BAD LANDS OF DAKOTA.
THE GREAT PLAIN REGION AND ITS
 GEOLOGICAL FORMATION.

The Home of Powerful Indian Tribes and
 Countless Herds of Buffaia-Orisin O,
 Teaches.
 Imagine, if you will, vast and seemingly endless plains, over which you may travel even by rail for days without leaving them, and if by stage or wagon for weeks. Gently undulating, like tidal swells upon a quiet ocean, without a tree or bush, the surface greenish yellow, or golden brown, or dull purple with sun cured grasses, The cool air, cloudless sky Gin September) and you have Dakota-at least four-fifths of the whole surface of it. And this description applies not only to Dakota but to the by far the largest portion of our northwestern territory out side the mountain regions. This boundless prairie averages above the sea about 2 900 feet. Its drainage and that of the mountains behind it is by the Missouri, which flows southeasterly fully 1000 miles within Da- kota. The Big Cheyenne, made up of two forks, one taking the water shed of the Black Hills of the north and west and the other from the south and east, forms the principal affiuent of the Missouri river in Dakota. All these waters are clay colored and roily from fine clays held in suspension.
 This great plain region of Dakota is wholly made up of level strata of vast deposits of the chalk and other periods, formed when a great inland sea covered this and other like regions of the northwest After the drainage of this sea its bed has since been cut through by the Missouri, the Cheyenne and other rivers, deep into the level strata, showing, where you look from the top of the bluffs bounding the rivers thread of dull yellow water, finding its winding way, perhaps 6 hundred feet or more below you, through a flood plain of shifting sand and clay, which varies from half a mile to five miles wide be- tween the bluffs. This flood plain at high water is covered many feet deep, but at this season is dry and irregularly covered with cottonwood poplars, aspen like in their silver and bright green leaves. The descent to the flood plains may be bold or gently sloping. Hero and there at frequent intervals the water shed of the plains finds its way to tho rivers by gentle sloping valley or draw, as it is called, down which teams and loaded wagons can easily follow.
 BELIEVED TO BE WORTHLESS
 It is curious to note that these great plains were believed until very recently to be worth less for any purpose of agriculture, that they were arid and desert like and that no crops could be raised upon them except by costly irrigation. This, however, was the home of the powerful Lacotahs Dakotas) and here roamed the countless herds of buffalo an ami nal without which the Indian could not live; whose skin gave him shelter and clothing; it's body food.
 An animal that reckless slaughter has made extinct; an animal whose extinction has made the red man dependent upon the whites for support; an animal which could have been doubtless easily domesticated and which would have formed a source of food and labor service of great value to this region, in which it was indigenous; an animal slaughtered for the mere pleasure of killing; it's meat and its hide abandoned; its extinction is blot upon the-prevention of cruelty to animals-civili- zation or upon the legislation of a people which permitted it.
 Notwithstanding the belief that these plains wero worthless, they were and are covered with hardy wild grasses, these including the buffalo or gramma grass, consisting of low tufts of curling blades, holding up here and therc seed stem, looking for all the world liko an ordinary bristle counter brush in miniature. As stated before, these grasses cure on tho ground, and furnish food more nutritious than tame hay, and ono which cattle can be turned out upon the winter through and come out in the spring fatter than they were in the beginning of winter These wild grasses are now cut by the farm CTS, stacked the same day as cut, and will keep good in stack for seven or eight years This hay crop forms a source of cash income to the settlers until such time as they can an close their lands and get other crops.
 WHY CALLED BAD LANDS"
 The Bad Lands arc so called, not because they were useless or sterile, but because they ! -l.-x ing to the accounts of the early French voy- ageurs up fhe Missouri. The Bad Lands form a prehistoric cemetery in which the remains of extinct animals are abundant, and many of which were giants in their way-rep5iles from ten to seventy feet long, sea animals eighty feet in length, turtles whose fippers reached fifteen feet, and bird-like whose wings spread twenty-five feet
 These plastic clays, smoothly leveled, the streaks of differing strata clearly defined, be- long to the later cretaceous deposits, and are 700 feet thick and stretch from Pierre, on the westward along the Cheyenne and White river regions. The geologic age which produced this deposit was the age of mammals, and Is splendidly de- veloped in this region. Quantities of re- mains exist of extinct creatures typical of the elephant, rh1nOceroS, camel, hon, tiger, etc. Nowhere does the erosion of the ancient rocks by ice and flood seem more wonderful such vast accumulation of drift material, clays, sands and gravel, in places hundreds of feet in depth and covering hundreds of thousands of equare miles in area
 Science shows conclusively that our conti- nent is one of the oldest in its uplift-that many portions of it were prepared for the existence of man at time when Europe and the east was slowly forming under the sea. The extent of the fossil remains of gigantic but extinct animals shows that the region of tho Bad Lands was densely crowded by living creatures, which, though now extinct, existed long before the allied types now found in the newer regions of Africa and Asia Frederick Stearns in Detroit Free Press.
 Big Cities of Japan.
 The big cities of Japan are in the Island of Hondo, which lies south of the Yezo, and which is several hundreds of miles long and at places 200 miles wide Here are the chief