Myths and Legends of our Own Land, by Charles M. Skinner, , at
sacred-texts.com "Hell, with the fires out," is what the Bad
Lands of Dakota have been called. The fearless Western
nomenclature fits the place. It is an ancient sea-bottom, with
its clay strata worn by frost and flood into forms like pagodas,
pyramids, and terraced cities. Labyrinthine canons wind among
these fantastic peaks, which are brilliant in color, but bleak,
savage, and oppressive. Game courses over the castellated hills,
rattlesnakes bask at the edge of the crater above burning coal
seams, and wild men have made despairing stand here against
advancing civilization. It may have been the white victim of a
red man's jealousy that haunts the region of the butte called
"Watch Dog," or it may have been an Indian woman who was killed
there, but there is a banshee in the desert whose cries have
chilled the blood that would not have cooled at the sight of a
bear or panther. By moonlight, when the scenery is most
suggestive and unearthly, and the