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Show THE MAUVAISES TERRES----THE WHITE CASTLES. 223 Mr. Mitchell to give to these original works of nature the name of " The White Castles." Mr. Bodmer (Plate XXXVII.) has given a very faithful representation of them. There were similar formations on the north bank likewise ; but the increasing storm did not allow us time to contemplate these wonders: our sail rent, and we were obliged to seek for shelter at the prairie of the south bank. We took advantage of the halt to explore the adjacent country, while the trees bent under the fury of the storm, and the thunder pealed in the very sultry air. We were now in a lateral chain of the Mauvaises Terres, a prolongation of the Black Hills, which here cross the Missouri. We proceeded on a sloping, rough flat, or prairie, which, with the usual vegetation, stretched along the river, and gradually becoming uneven and hilly, rose towards the mountains, and was covered, near the foremost hills, with diversely stratified fragments and blocks of yellowish-brown sand-stone. All around rose the wonderful chains of the lofty, bare, whitish-grey or grey-brown mountains, with their conical or singularly-shaped summits, sloped or stratified in divers ways, and dotted with scattered groups of dark green pines. It was during this day's voyage that these mountains increased so much in elevation, and in originality of character, that we seemed to be suddenly transported to the mountains of Switzerland. The Missouri, which is here rather narrow, winds its course, confined between the high ridges of clay-slate, sand-stone, and clay; and the torpid, naked scenery around is only animated on the bank by verdant strips of poplars and young shrubs. On the rough plain, at the foot of the hills, the vegetation was, for the most part, withered: the Allium reticulatum, with its white flowers, quite dried up; Cactus ferox, poor and shrivelled, and the bones of the buffaloes, bleached by exposure to the air, bore testimony, even in this solitude, to the uncertainty of life. The tracks of these colossal animals soon led our hunters to recent footsteps, and several of them appeared in the ravines; but thunder-storms, in the north-east and west, soon poured down torrents of rain, and scared the animals. When the weather cleared up, we approached nearer to the White Castles, and the illusion vanished. On the 26th of July, in the morning, we again viewed the White Castles in another point of view. The pretty squirrel, called, by Say, Sciurus quadrivittatus, lives in the clay ground of these parts ; our towers caught one, which we kept alive, for a long time, in a cage. Round the trunk of an old tree the Indians had built a conical hut with pieces of wood;. but in the whole voyage from Fort Union to Fort Me Kenzie, such huts were the only signs of human beings, and we did not see a single Indian. Game was now scarce in the Mauvaises Terres, and Morrin was the only person who killed anything to-day. In these parts the singular, perfectly spherical sand-stone balls are also found in the clay hills, which have been already described at Cannon-ball River; they are sometimes double, and, here, generally of the size of canister shot. The prairies were so covered with grasshoppers that the whole surface of the ground seemed to be alive; and where the dry leaves were still lying they caused a constant rattling noise. That species was most f. .1 9% I |