o hill, so that the
hills themselves are slowly journeying eastward on the wings of arid
gales, and sand tempests may be encountered more terrible than storms of
snow or hail. Here the northern boundary of the Plateau Province is
found, for mesas and high table-lands are found on either side of the
river.

On the east side of the Green, mesas and plateaus have irregular
escarpments with points extending into the valleys, and between these
points canyons come down that head in the highlands. Everywhere the
escarpments are fringed with outlying buttes. Many portions of the
region are characterized by bad lands. These are hills carved out of
sandstone, shales, and easily disintegrated rocks, which present many
fantastic forms and are highly colored in a great variety of tint and
tone, and everywhere they are naked of vegetation. Now and then low
mountains crown the plateaus. Altogether it is a region of desolation.
Through the midst of the country, from east to west, flows an
intermittent stream known as Bitter Creek. In seasons of rain it carries
floods; in seasons of drought it disappears in the sands, and its waters
are alkaline and often poisonous. Stretches of bad-land desert are
interrupted by other stretches of sage plain, and on the high lands
gnarled and picturesque forests of juniper and pinon are found. On the
west side of the river the mesas rise by grassy slopes to the westward
into high plateaus that are forest-clad, first with juniper and pinon,
and still higher with pines and firs. Some of the streams run in canyons
and others have elevated valleys along their courses. On the south
border of this mesa and plateau country are the Bridger Bad Lands, lying
at the foot of the Uinta Mountains. These bad lands are of gray, green,
and brown shales that are carved in picturesque forms--domes, towers,
pinnacles, and minarets, and bold cliffs with deep alcoves; and all are
naked rock, the sediments of an ancient lake. These lake beds are filled
with fossils,--the preserved bones of fishes, reptiles, and mammals, of
strange and often gigantic forms, no longer found living on the globe.
It is a desert to the agriculturist, a mine to the paleontologist, and a
paradise to the artist.

The region thus described, from Fremont's Peak to the Uinta Mountains,
has been the home of tribes of Indians of the Shoshonean family from
time immemorial. It is a great hunting and fishing region, and the
vigorous Shoshones still obtain