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trees (brush) parting to the right and left of the creek which here turns to the northeast. There is a triangular shaped area of bare grassed hills and low rounded ridges enclosed by these two lines of timber and Yellowstone River. The Mud geysers at one corner, the Sulphur glen and the southwest and the mouth of Alum Creek at the other. On the steeper faces of the hill there are whitish exposures in which by digging with our hammers we came upon horizontally bedded sandy clays. There were no good exposures as the formation crumbles so easily. These are probably the past pleocene lake beds mentioned by Hayden and Peale. 

This extent here I believe to be pretty clearly indicated by the treeless district. Their want of compactness prevent the forest from growing although a few patches of pines are scattered over the area (see map in sketch book). There are a few masses of pitchstone and trachyte scattered over the area and the first pebbles of metamorphic rock were here observed since entering the park, and they were few. The material is very fine. In the middle part of Alum Creek valley are some small outcrops of pitchstone in which are enclosed small masses of trachyte. Also some trachyte From the summits of these hills we first observed the brilliant white and pinkish cones of the crater hills and soon afterwards the Yellowstone River came in view at the point where it is joined by Alum Creek. To our left was Violet Creek and the brilliantly colored hot spring district at its head. Just above this in the timber is the locality where