CHAPTER XXVI.
The Black Mountains .-- Haunts of Predatory Indians .-- Their Wild and Broken Appearance .-- Superstitions Concerning Them-- Thunder Spirits .-- Singular Noises in the Mountains--Secret Mines.-Hidden Treasures .-- Mountains in Labor .-- Scientific Explanation.-Impassable Defiles .-- Black-Tailed Deer.-The Bighorn or Ahsahta.-Prospect From a Lofty Height .-- Plain With Herds of Buffalo.-Distant Peaks of the Rocky Mountains .-- Alarms in the Camp.-Tracks of Grizzly Bears .-- Dangerous Nature of This Animal.-Adventures of William Cannon and John Day With Grizzly Bears.
MR.

Hunt and his party were now on the skirts of the Black Hills, or Black Mountains, as they are sometimes called; an extensive chain, lying about a hundred miles east of the Rocky Mountains, and stretching in a northeast direction from the south fork of the Nebraska, or Platte River, to the great north bend of the Missouri.

The Sierra or ridge of the Black Hills, in fact, forms the dividing line between the waters of the Missouri and those of the Arkansas and the Mississippi, and gives rise to the Cheyenne, the Little Missouri, and several tributary streams of the Yellowstone.
The wild recesses of these hills, like those of the Rocky Mountains, are retreats and lurking-places for broken and predatory tribes, and it was among them that the remnants of the Cheyenne tribe took refuge, as has been stated, from their conquering enemies, the Sioux.
The Black Hills are chiefly composed of sandstone, and in many places are broken into savage cliffs and precipices, and present the most singular and fantastic forms; sometimes resembling towns and castellated fortresses.

The ignorant inhabitants of plains are prone to clothe the mountains that bound their horizon with fanciful and superstitious attributes.

Thus the wandering tribes of the prairies, who often behold clouds gathering round the summits of these hills, and lightning flashing, and thunder pealing from them, when all the neighboring plains are serene and sunny, consider them the abode of the genii or thunder-spirits who fabricate storms and tempests.