and thirst make us less dainty. The mixture of mud, tea and sugar was, after all, palatable to our famished stom achs. We set out a pailful of this water to settle over night, and in the morning found it three-quarters full of pure mud. On the morrow we traveled all day and found a delicious spring, where we camped all night.
The Bad Lands, in the portions which are traversed by the Mankizita-Watpa, are the most extraordinary of any I have met in my journeys through the wilderness. The action of the rains, snow and winds upon the argillaceous soil is scarcely credible; and the combined influence of these elements renders it the theatre of most singular scenery. Viewed at a distance, these lands exhibit the appearance of extensive villages and ancient castles, but under forma so extraordinary, and so capricious a style of architecture, that we might consider them as appertaining to some near world, or ages far remote. Here a majestic Gothic tower, surrounded with turrets, rises in noble grandeur, and there enormous and lofty columns seem reared to support the vault of heaven. Farther on you may descry a fort beaten by the tempest and surrounded by mantellated walls; its hoary parapets appear to have endured, during many successive ages, the assaults of tempest, earthquake and thunder. Cupolas of colossal proportions, and pyramids which recall the gigantic labors of ancient Egypt, rise around. The atmospherical agents work upon them with such effect that probably two consecutive years do not pass without reforming or destroying these strange constructions. This clayey soil hardens easily in the sun, is of a grayish hue, or occasionally of a sparkling white; it is easily softened when mixed with water. The Mankizita-Watpa is the great drain of the streams of this country, and corresponds admirably to the name bestowed upon it by the Indians.
The industry of the settler will never succeed in cultivating and planting this fluctuating and sterile soil-no harvest ever crown his efforts. But though it offers no interest to the farmer, and little to the botanist, the geolo