Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/90

72 The latter is a pretty bubbling stream, running over sand and stones washed down from the Court-house Ridge; it bifurcates above the ford, runs to the northeast through a prairie four to five miles broad, and swells the waters of old Father Platte: it derives its name from a Frenchman slaughtered by the Indians, murder being here, as in Central Africa, ever the principal source of nomenclature. The heads of both streams afford quantities of currants, red, black, and yellow, and cherry-sticks which are used for spears and pipe-stems.

After twelve miles' drive we fronted the Court-house, the remarkable portal of a new region, and this new region teeming with wonders will now extend about 100 miles. It is the mauvaises terres, or Bad lands, a tract about 60 miles wide and 150 long, stretching in a direction from the northeast to the southwest, or from the Mankizitah (White-Earth) River, over the Niobrara (Eau qui court) and Loup Fork to the south banks of the Platte: its eastern limit is the mouth of the Keya Paha. The term is generally applied by the trader to any section of the prairie country where the roads are difficult, and by dint of an ill name the Bad lands have come to be spoken of as a Golgotha, white with the bones of man and beast. American travelers, on the contrary, declare that near parts of the White River "some as beautiful valleys are to be found as any where in the Far West," and that many places "abound in the most lovely and varied forms in endless variety, giving the most striking and pleasing effects of light and shade." The formation is the pliocene and miocene tertiary, uncommonly rich in vertebrate remains: the mauvaises terres are composed of nearly horizontal strata, and "though diversified by the effects of denuding agencies, and presenting in different portions striking characteristics, yet they are, as a whole, a great uniform surface, gradually rising toward the mountains, at the base of which they attain an elevation varying between 3000 and 5500 feet above the level of the sea."

The Court-house, which had lately suffered from heavy rain, resembled any thing more than a court-house; that it did so in former days we may gather from the tales of many travelers, old Canadian voyageurs, who unanimously accounted it a fit place for Indian spooks, ghosts, and hobgoblins to meet in powwow, and to "count their coups" delivered in the flesh. The Court-house lies about eight miles from the river, and three from the road; in circumference it may be half a mile, and in height 300 feet; it is, however, gradually degrading, and the rains and snows of not many years will lay it level with the ground. The material is a rough conglomerate of hard marl; the mass is apparently the flank or shoulder of a range forming the southern buttress of the Platte, and which, being composed of softer stuff, has gradually