Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1889-09-07
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DAKOTA sAc LANDS.
Am Interesting Section of This More ThAn
Wonderful Country.


Wonderful Country.
West of Bismarck and the river the
country is generally level until the
Bad Lands are reached. They are not
bad lands at all, but wonderful Hands.
They constitute one of the most
marvellous physical appearances to be
observed on this continent. They are
come upon suddenly, and without sug-
gestion that the prairie level is to be
so strangely broken. All at once
numberless peaks, as sharp in their
formation as the fingers of your hand.
rising straight from the earth. an
army OF massive buttes. They are of
all conceivable shapes; some are cir
cuhar pyramids. perfect in form.
Others rise like quartz crystals, with
sides as smooth as board. and
frequently from one of these straight
and regular buttes the petrified
stumps OF enormous trees will pro-
trude, siiicified by the action of the
same waters that gave figures to the
buttes themselves ages and ages ago.
The Bad Lands begin about one
hundred miles west OF Bismarck and
follow the course. north and south. Of
the Little Missouri river. North OF
the railroad their finest scenic effects
are on the eastern side of the Little
Missouri, and no feat of pen or brush
can give any fair conception OF the
extravaganza.
They assume not only every con-
ceivable appearance. but all the
appearances that might be attributed
to the hand and the Imagination OF
race of mental freaks. They twist
themselves into ten thousand different
contortions. They show you devils.
plunging horses, wolf heads, old
men, cut and nodded by wind and
water in clay and sand and limestone.
or in the frmer substance formed
by the petrifactiOn. shapes that seem
oddly harmonious with the natural life
that for so long a time made these
wild places their habitation. At every
turn your mind is newly startled. You
see devices not only in themselves
grOtesque. but standing forth, shoot
ing out, plunging down in such utterly
novel and unnatural situations. EnOr-
nous masses OF rock seem in the. dis
tance to be hanging by a single silken
thread. poised over plain on which a
hundred figures dressed in white. blue.
black, green, gray and yellow are
dancing in gleeful and thoughtless
sports, springing upwards, turning
somersaults and performing all tricks
of harlequin. The buttes themselves.
with some part clad in the greenest
verdure, elsewhere in the black weav-
ing of vegetation that has turned to
coal, here in the pink trimminqs 81 =
real terra Gotta which Ignite fires
have been slowly baking. there in the
creamy laees knitted by the winds
through great deposits of alkali- left
upon the surface of the soil by waters
that have long since been drained
away-the buttes themselves, multi
piled ten thousand times and chiseled
into castles. domes, spires, towers and
monuments. present each its separate
picture of weird but magnificent dis
order. Those wise fellows who know
every thing say that there was once a
great lake here which was gradually
drained away through the two Mis-
souris; and that the waters, as they
swept toward the sea. cut and modelled
the Bad Lands. Cor. n. Y. Tribune