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Show 84 FROM FORT KEARNY TO FORT LARAMIE. leaving the Blue. This little creek, running parallel with the South Fork, winds its very sinuous way, without bank or shrub or bush to mark its course, until it discharges its waters into the river several miles below. The bluffs on our left continue to present the same wild forms, being also clothed in many places with trees, among which the white- cedar appeared to. predominate. Owing to the sandy nature of the soil, no fossils were found in a perfect state, except two varieties of shells: some imperfect remains of teeth were also seen, but in too frail a condition to be preserved. About six miles below the Forks, the bluffs presented a rougher appearance than those passed early in the day. The principal ravines did not appear to extend very far back, but were of considerable width, and intersected by others which came into them from every direction. Their sides were very steep, rising in some cases to the height of two hundred feet; and so entirely was the surface of the ground intersected and cut up, that it was difficult to find a spot of even a few yards square that did not enter into the formation of some one of them. The prodigious quantity of earth that has been removed by the action of water cannot be imagined without witnessing the scene here presented. The soil composing the hills, although mixed more or less with clay, is sandy, and occasionally assumes the character of a very friable sandstone. Opposite the Forks, however, the formation of the bluffs again alters, and begins to assume a more undulatory and less precipitous appearance, not so much traversed by ravines. This change is occasioned by the cropping out of a stratum of a whitish sandstone. The bluffs passed to- day must, at a period long back, have extended much closer to the river than where we now find them, having, in fact, been gradually washed into it, leaving the valley much broader, and, to a certain extent, one of denudation. Carduus, Cactus with a large sickly- lookingyellow flower, Amor-phaj Tradescantia, a small sunflower, and a species of milk- plant were here found. The Amorpha is beginning to bloom. The vetch, with its purple clusters, is met with, but seems of a different species from that seen heretofore, and has not so much foliage. Wednesday', June 27.- To- day the hunters killed their first buffalo ; but, in order to obtain it, had to diverge some four or five miles from the road, and to pass back of the bluffs, the instinct or experience of these sagacious animals having rendered them shy of approaching the line of travel. This has not always been the case, for it is a well- attested fact, that when the emigration first |