bed of the river, varying from two to three hundred feet above it. The river has formed for itself a bed, now two, now twenty miles wide, through this prairie region. It overflows the whole of this bed at the highest water, and leaves on the meadows the deepest and richest alluvial soil, through which winds the singularly circuitous current of the river.

The channel constantly changes in the passage through this alluvial formation, new sand-bars are formed, and old ones washed away.

The bluffs formed at the edge of the meadows present very curious appearances to the voyager. They are sometimes entirely bare, but generally clothed with verdure. Thousands of different forms may be made out, sometimes assuming the aspect of artificial works-domes, ramparts, terraces, towers, castles, solitary columns, and even spires of clay. The singularity of these formations puzzles the geologist, while it amuses the traveller. As he passes up the river, the country is less broken and more picturesque. A thousand miles, or more, just below the Yellowstone, is described by Mr. Catlin as enchanting as fairy land; of the deepest green, varied with every possible diversity, and covered with herds of buffaloes, with elk, antelopes, mountain goats and sneaking wolves.

In general, the country of the lower part of this valley lacks wood for useful purposes. The immediate shores of the river, however, abound in cotton-wood, which fills it with snags, sawyers and drift-wood; and the bottoms of the

tributary streams are, in general, well wooded. At Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clarke used elm wood of large size, and found ash of inferior size.

On the tributaries of the Upper Missouri, above the Yellowstone, timber is more abundant, and will probably be found valuable for lumbering purposes. In his survey, last summer, of the Maria river, which discharges into the Missouri on its north side, about the meridian of 110°, Gov. Stevens found immense forests, obstructing the way in all directions. These are, he says, the principal obstacles to the survey of all these passes. On the great river itself, Lewis and Clarke speak of the timber as more abundant as they ascended to its sources.

The most important tributary to the Missouri in the northern part of the territory is the Yellowstone, so called after the French, who had named it La Roche Jaune. Its sources are in the Wind River Mountains, near the South Pass. Capt. Clarke descended it, from near its source to its mouth, in 1807. Its general direction is north-east. For eight hundred and thirty-seven miles above its junction with the Missouri, he found it large and navigable for batteaux, there being none of the moving sand-bars of the Missouri, and only one ledge of rock, which is not difficult to pass. Its tributary rivers may be ascended in boats for a considerable distance. The banks are low, but bold, and nowhere subject to be overflowed, except for a short distance below the mountains. In the upper parts of the river, Capt. Clarke

THE YELLOWSTONE VALLEY.

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found the current four and a half miles an hour; at its mouth, not more than two. The whole country watered by it is described as fertile, rich, and open. Above Clarke's Fork, it consists of high, waving plains, bordered by stony hills partly supplied with pine. There is less timber below, and still less near the Missouri.

The valleys of the Yellowstone, and of its tributaries, will be the garden of northern Nebraska. They abound in buffalo, beaver, and otter, and are a favorite resort of hunters and trappers, notwithstanding the hostility of the Blackfeet, who range through them. In Captain Bonneville's Adventures, edited by Mr. Irving, will be found interesting narratives of several journeys of his through this region.

At the mouth of the Yellowstone, at a point indicated as early as 1806, by Lewis and Clarke, as a favorable spot for a station, the American Fur Company have their principal fort, Fort Union. The Missouri here is three hundred and thirty yards wide, with a deep channel; the Yellowstone, near three hundred. The space between the rivers is well wooded, and rises, in a series of plains, quite above the inundations of the stream, and extending back several miles to the hills. The fort is three hundred feet square, with bastions armed with ordnance.

It seems very probable that a route to Oregon and Washington territories up the valley of the Yellowstone, and so across the Rocky Mountains, may be found, and prove

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to have the advantage of the more northerly route by the Upper Missouri.

These great valleys of the waters of the Upper Missouri and the Yellowstone, with the uplands which separate them, constitute by far the principal part of the territory of NEBRASKA, though not that which will be first sought by settlers.

An intelligent writer in the New York Tribune, who is familiar with the country, thus describes the agricultural capabilities of the several parts of it:—

"The surface of the country, from the Missouri river westward to the spurs of the mountains, is rolling prairie, but little diversified in its aspect save by the intersection of its streams. The soil, for a space varying from fifty to one hundred miles west of the Missouri river and the state line, is nearly identical with that of Iowa and Missouri. The highlands are open prairies, covered with grasses; the riverbottom a deep rich loam, shaded by dense forests. From this first district to about the mouth of L'Eau qui Court (Running Water river), it is one boundless expanse of rolling prairie, so largely intermixed with sand as to be almost unfit for ordinary agricultural purposes. The prairies are, however, carpeted with succulent grasses, affording an inexhaustible supply for herds of cattle and sheep.

"The third district is a formation of marl and earthy limestone, and extends in a belt of many miles east and west of the Mandan village, on the most northern bend of

the Missouri river, and southward across the southern boundary of the territory. This soil cannot be otherwise than very productive. I should think it especially adapted to wheat, rye, barley, and oats. I have seen, also, very fine Indian corn along the upper valleys of the Missouri river. It is in this district that what are called buttes by the Canadian French, and cerros by the Spaniards, are profusely scattered. Here and there the traveller finds surfaces, varying in diameter from a hundred feet to a mile, elevated from fifteen to fifty feet above the surrounding surface. They are not hills or knobs, the sides of which are more or less steep and covered with grass. Their sides are nearly perpendicular, their surfaces flat, and often covered with mountain cherries and other shrubs. They have the appearance of having been suddenly elevated above the surrounding surface by some specific cause. This marl and limestone formation is, in many localities, worked into fantastic or picturesque forms by the action of the elements. In one place, especially, called by the traders La Mauvaise Terre (the bad ground), and about thirty miles in diameter, it has assumed a marvellous variety of singular forms. From one point of view it assumes the aspect of an extensive and frowning fortification; from another, the appearance of an oriental city crowned with domes and minarets; and from a third, the appearance of a sterile, broken, and unattractive congregation of incongruous elements. These