Show BAD LANDS IN MONTANA miles on miles of rugged chaset fantastically carved it seems to me that no human being can stand on that spot and view that marvelous labyrinth of wild nature without being thrilled by it instantly your thoughts fly to the grand canyon of the colorado as seen from point sublime only thia Is in miniature the fact that you stand on a sharp point from which the world drops steeply away on three sides Is not the thing that Is profoundly impressive is the depth the breadth and the awful wilderness of the maze of bad land int which you look before you and on either hand there stretch miles upon miles ot ragged chasms divided and walled in by a thou sand fantastic cliffs and buttresses and domes of naked hard fan that stubbornly defy the forces of erosion and refuse to crumble awn in several places there are masse of earth architecture that remind one of the ruined castlean on the rhine these bare walla are most ly of gray earth not rock and the carving of them has been most strangely done it Is only when you climb among them and touch them that the wonders of erosion are fully revealed the hard dry earth has most stubbornly resisted the disintegrating action of the water wind heat and cold and there are hundreds of earth cliffs nearly as smooth and as gerpen as the brick walls of harlem I 1 dislike to estimate the total drop of these bad lands from the plateau to the waters of snow creek but I 1 think it Is about SOO feet after the first mainente moi of spell bound wonder and amaze you begin to pick out the geography of what lies before you you see that the axis of all this wild waste of carved and furrowed earth is the evel and very narrow valley of snow creek which comes down from the west you can easily trace its course eastward to the point where it bends abruptly northward and runs into the missouri parallel with the last eight miles of hell creek in the creek bottom there is a sinuous string of cottonwood trees aspens and willow brush scribner |