bases are elevated from 2500 to 3500 feet—the highest peaks attaining 6700 feet—above river level, while their eastern is from 2000 to 3000 feet below the western foundation. Their materials, as determined by Lieutenant Warren's exploration, are successively metamorphosed azoic rock, including granite, lower Silurian (Potsdam sandstone), Devonian (?), carboniferous, Permian, Jurassic, and cretaceous. Like Ida, they are abundant in springs and flowing streams, which shed mainly to the northeast and the southeast, supplying the Indians with trout and salmon trout, catfish (Prinelodus), and pickerel. They abound in small rich valleys, well grown with grass, and wild fruits, choke-cherries (P. Virginiana), currants, sand-buttes fruit (C. pumila?), and buffalo berries (Shepherdia argentea, or grains de bœuf). When irrigated, the bottoms are capable of high cultivation. They excel in fine timber for fuel and lumber, covering an area of 1500 square miles; in carboniferous rock of the true coal measures; and in other good building material. As in most of the hill ranges which are offsets from the Rocky Mountains, they contain gold in valuable quantities, and doubtless a minute examination will lead to the discovery of many other useful minerals. The Black Hills are appropriately named: a cloak of gloomy forest, pine and juniper, apparently springing from a rock denuded of less hardy vegetation, seems to invest them from head to foot. The Laramie Hills are sub-ranges of the higher ridge, and the well-known peak, the Pharos of the prairie mariner, rises about 1° due west of Fort Laramie to the height of 6500 feet above sea level. Beyond the meridian of Laramie the country totally changes. The broad prairie lands, unencumbered by timber, and covered with a rich pasturage, which highly adapts them for grazing, are now left behind. We are about to enter a dry, sandy, and sterile waste of sage, and presently of salt, where rare spots are fitted for rearing stock, and this formation will continue till we reach the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.
At length, the mules coming about 10 45 A.M., we hitched up, and, nothing loth, bade adieu to Horseshoe Creek and the "ladies." The driver sentimentally informed us that we were to see no more specimens of ladyhood for many days—gladdest tidings to one of the party, at least. The road, which ran out of sight of the river, was broken and jagged; a little labor would have made it tolerable, but what could the good pastor of Oberlin do with a folk whose only thought in life is dram-drinking, tobacco-chewing, trading, and swapping?[1] The country was cut with creeks
- ↑ The civilized Anglo-Americans are far more severe upon their half-barbarous brethren than any stranger; to witness, the following:
A Hoosier (native of Indiana) was called upon the stand, away out West, to testify to the character of a brother Hoosier. It was as follows:
"How long have you known Bill Bushwhack?"
"Ever since he war born."
"What is his general character?"
