Excerpt from A Brief History of South Dakota Then the ocean seems to have come back and swept down another stratum of soil from the mountain bases, and after it had again subsided came a race of monstrous reptiles, the remains of which are found quite generally over the state wherever the formation of that period is exposed. It is quite certain that at this time South Dakota was in the main a vast steaming swamp, for the climate was tropical, and out of the swamp grew tropical verdure. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.