"Bad lands" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the old flag still flies over us. The people here talk about going to the "States." All the region hereabouts, from the middle of Nebraska, lies in what used to be called by the French Les Mauvaises Terres, or "Bad Lands," and was eloquently described by Irving in Astoria as the Great American Desert. "This region," he writes, "resembles one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, and spreads forth into undulating ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... hundred miles of weary marching before them. Much of the country beyond the Platte was "Bad Lands," where the grass is scant and poor, the soil ashen and spongy, and the water densely alkaline. All this would tell very sensibly upon the condition of horses that all winter long had been comfortably stabled, regularly groomed and grain-fed, and watered only in pure ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... and weary march over the plains of the Dakotas toward Montana. It encountered the Indians a number of times, routing them, and continued on its way. About the middle of August the expedition entered the Bad Lands, and the members were the first white men to traverse that unexplored region. In the fall the battalion returned to Fort Ridgley, where they went into winter quarters, having marched over 3,000 miles since leaving Fort Snelling. Capt. Shelly was mustered ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... of the most fertile territory in the province had been distributed in large tracts to wealthy landlords. In consequence "great numbers of poor people are necessitated to toil in the cultivation of the bad Lands whereon they hardly can subsist." It was these poor people, "thereby deprived of His Majesties liberality and Bounty," who soon turned their gaze to the westward and crossed the mountains in search of the rich, free ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... gray hairs in the roadmasters' records from McCloud to Bear Dance. That June the mountain streams roared, the foothills floated, the plains puffed into sponge, and in the thick of it all the Spider Water took a man-slaughtering streak and started over the Bad Lands across lots. The big river forced Bucks' hand once more, and to protect the main line Glover, third of the mountain roadbuilders, was ordered off the high-line construction and back to the hills where Brodie and Hailey ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... the Bad Lands did not do this: they used to stand on their dignity and growl like a thunder-storm, and so gave the hunters a chance to play their deadly lightning; and lightning is worse than thunder any day. Men can get used to growls that rumble along the ground and up one's legs to the little house ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... faithful four-footed friend and companion, for the command for rations had been reduced to horse meat on the hoof. Three hundred miles from the nearest post when their supplies gave out, in the heart of the Bad Lands and the height of the worst season of the year, except midwinter, it had turned its back to the forts and its face to the foe, true to its orders, still following the trail of the hostile tribe,—the only hot thing ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... west of the Rockies and south of—— Why," cried the professor, interrupting himself, "when I was in Wyoming and around there, this spring, in what they call the Bad Lands,—cliffs and buttes of indurated yellow clay and sandstone, worn and carved out by floods long before the Aztecs started to move out of Canada,—I saw fossil bones sticking out of the cliffs, the least of which would make the fortune of a museum. That was between the Rockies ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... mining-town in the bare mountains, he would be at the mouth of Quigley Pass, which led to a little-used trail through the mountains and almost in a straight line across the arm of the desert known locally as the Bad Lands. Though he had never crossed these weary, empty miles, and though there were no towns and few water-holes within their blistered scope, Howard judged that he could save close to fifty miles of the return trip. So he slipped his foot into the stirrup and swung out toward Quigley, hopeful of finding ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... of weary marching before them. Much of the country beyond the Platte was "Bad Lands," where the grass is scant and poor, the soil ashen and spongy, and the water densely alkaline. All this would tell very sensibly upon the condition of horses that all winter long had been comfortably stabled, regularly groomed and grain-fed, and watered only in pure running streams flushed ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King |
