T. H. McBride

“ We may discover the coal on one side of a broad-topped hill, and on the other we may look from the hill's summit down through gaping rifts to the same horizon and see everything molten at white heat, while hot air, smoke, and coal-gas, as from a furnace, make the region almost inaccessible. ”

“ Yonder, along that other trail still so clearly visible over the distant buttes, went Custer and his band when they marched away to the west and disappeared from human sight forever. The climate is an arid one, and the process of erosion slow. Looking out over the landscape as we now see it, none would imagine that all this territory was at one time favored with a climate perhaps nearly semi-tropical, that over all this wide area were waving forests of perpetual green, stretching away to the north, south, east, and west, almost to the limits of the so-called "Plains." ”

“ The splintery fragments, broken as macadamizing stone, form over the entire surface a natural riprap, on which the elements spend their force in vain. Such buttes are not transient; the fire has saved them, and in this dry climate they may stand forever. ”

“ It is manifest that if this process be continued, and if all the hills are like that described, the reduction of all these terraces and mounds is but a question of time, and we may look forward to the day when all this now wild and impassable country shall be but a prairie of gentle undulations and monotonous outlook, not dissimilar to the wide plains which even now stretch off far to the east to blend with the Missouri Valley. Every mountain shall be made low and every valley filled, and no force more violent be concerned than the gentle action of the wind and rain. ”

“ Here are whole beds of clay baked until they have taken on the color and character of hard-burned brick or unglazed pottery. The resonance of the dry fragments under the hammer or the wheels of our vehicle is precisely that of broken terra-cotta. Sometimes the top of the butte is bare and red; sometimes the whole mass, from top to bottom, has been burned, and at a distance seems like a brick-kiln fallen into ruin. ”

“ The loosened earth is much of it swept away, and a deep gulch forms between the ridges, and so the air comes freely to the fire, which might otherwise be smothered in its own ruin. Meanwhile the hearts of the hills themselves are baked like tiles in a close kiln, and while the fire would seem to hasten erosion, as in some places it certainly does, yet the metamorphism accomplished tends in the opposite direction, and is efficient in proportion to the completeness of the change. ”

“ Far as you can look or listen there comes not the faintest sign or whisper of living thing. No bird visits those forgotten hills, no insect stirs about your feet or beats with humming wings the air; the very wind is silent, and from the glowing buttes, as from a furnace, the heated atmosphere rises in shimmering columns. ”

“ The climate must have been warm and equable. Indeed, that the climate, not of Dakota only, but of the whole northern hemisphere, was at one time far milder than now seems proved, for leaves such as these of which we speak have been found in Greenland and many other circumpolar lands. What may have been the prime cause of this former high temperature in high latitudes we leave students of physical geography and surface geology to decide, but we may say this: the warm and equable climates of the world are maritime, or characteristic of islands, as the climate of Italy or the Grecian Archipelago. ”

“ Even the vegetation which the spring-time may have brought seems to vanish from the earth, the precipitated alkali whitens the valleys, and from all the naked hills comes up a glare of dazzling light as from a desert absolute. ”

“ We may say fossil leaves, but this is hardly the correct description, since we have preserved to us not a vestige of the original leaf, but simply a mold left in the imbedding clay, as the matter of the leaf disappeared. In fortunate cases, therefore, we have both the upper and lower surfaces of the leaf exhibited, and these impressions are perfect, so that experienced observers can determine, not the order only, but the genus, often the very species and variety, of the tree from which a given leaf has fallen! ”

“ Populus we know from our aspens, balm of Gilead, and more than all by the cottonwood—a prairie-tree—abundant along our Western rivers, and following the Missouri and its tributaries to the very foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains. ”

“ If, after the storm, we examine again the face of the bluff, we find it striated with numberless tiny channels, down which have just poured little rivulets of water hardly so much as wetting the surface, while from top to bottom the erosion has been about the same, the slightly increased density of the upper layer enabling them to sustain the brunt of the storm, and yet suffer no more wear than the softer strata beneath. ”

“ Even the lignite is no exception. If, now, in connection with this fact, and remembering the arrangement of the strata, we take into account the arid climate which prevails in all these regions, we are in position to understand much of the peculiar conformation of the Bad Lands. In the winter the snows are light, and in summer the rain that falls comes in sudden, violent, but short-lived storms. ”

“ The lignite-beds furnish the fuel, the slow-paced erosion lays the fuel bare, spontaneous combustion supplies the torch, and the whole phenomenon is explained.
That the lignite is in some way connected with the fiery metamorphosis of the Bad Lands we might have inferred from the fact that no lignite ever appears above the burned belts, and in a hill entirely burned the lignite is entirely wanting. The burned clay also corresponds in position to beds overlying the coal in hills immediately adjacent. ”

“ The level must at one time have been higher still than we had first supposed. The changes of the past are enormous as compared with anything shown by the present, or even possible in the future of these strata. Owing to the peculiar nature of the strata, their uniformity and lack of solidity, the erosion has produced effects unique, and to these the fire has brought permanence and stability. Far as the coal beds extend erosion has been or is liable to be arrested, and the country doomed to infertility. ”

“ That a large body of fresh water may work wonders in temperature and amount of moisture, is to us a familiar fact witnessed by the climate of the peninsula of Michigan. And so, to meet the requisite climatic conditions suggested by these few leaves, we are ready to accept without doubt the statements of men who from their study of the topography of the Bad Lands declare the whole region to have been, perhaps again and again, the bed of a wide-spread inland lake or sea. ”

“ Just above, and perfectly conformable, is a layer of lignitic coal, inferior to soft coal, of a deep-brown color, rapidly crumbling on exposure to the air, and even, when in sufficient mass, liable to spontaneous ignition. Overlying the coal is another bed of clay of an ashy hue, containing more or less sand in composition. ”

“ Here is a corner of the world in which the evidences of change—of transition are—so patent that a glance reveals them to the dullest beholder. It is as if Nature were here trying to impress upon her children a great object-lesson, as if the universal Dame had said: "Behold! ”

“ Here have I stripped all the hills and laid bare all the valleys, that you might learn my time honored methods, and once for all see something of how worlds are made." No man would say, as he looks for the first time out over these naked hills: "Such have they ever been; such shall they always be." ”

“ To describe the present flora and especially the fauna of this region would require no very long chapter, and yet the list of species would be longer than some might suspect. Where erosion less interrupted by the fires has been allowed to do its perfect work, there are level areas of considerable extent sparsely covered with short grass, on which the prong-horn, the elk, the deer, and the big-horn sheep, have been wont to graze. The valleys, and even the flat tops of the buttes in May, are said to abound with flowers. ”

“ Scattered over the grassy low-lands, crowning many an isolated pillar of sandstone or clay, lying here and there on all the high hills, are remnants of gigantic trees, remnants more or less perfectly silicified, stumps, boles, and branches. ”

“ HOWEVER interesting the Bad Lands may be in their scenery and in their conditions purely physical, it is only when we consider them in their relation to life and its progress on the earth that they become most attractive, most engaging. ”

“ Yet such is the case, and this complete transition from the wealth of primeval woods to the poverty of semi-desert has been brought about not by the devastation of short-sighted man, but by the orderly procedure of all those indefinite forces which for convenient description men sum up as Nature. ”

“ These trees all secrete about their buds more or less of fragrant wax, and possibly from the tiny pits seen at the base of the leaf of P. glandulifera exuded some such balsamic gum which spread and polished the upper surface of the young leaves. Of Corylus and Carpinus little need be said. The hazels and hornbeams are sufficiently well known as characteristic of north temperate forests everywhere. The genus Juglans we know from our invaluable walnut, once common throughout the Eastern United States. A single species is found also in Asia Minor and Europe. ”

“ Scientists are frequently disposed to doubt petrifactions, and are often compelled to disappoint popular expectation in regard to forms most fairly outlined; but that these stumps and logs and splinters have been wood there can be no possible doubt. ”

“ We have represented, in Figs. 3-12, leaves of the following genera:Platanus, Populus, Juglans, Corylus, Carpinus, Persea, Mens, Sequoia, Comics [2] These names are all familiar, although we are not accustomed to see them grouped together. Platanus is represented throughout the northern Mississippi Valley by the sycamore, frequenting the water-courses and rocky banks, and often attaining grand dimensions. Two species of the genus occur in California, two in Mexico, and one in the far Levant. ”