five o'clock
`` But be calm , Uncle Prudent , be calm . '' `` Be calm ! '' `` And keep your temper until it is wanted . '' By five o'clock they had crossed the Black Mountains covered with pines and cedars , and the `` Albatross '' was over the appropriately named Bad Lands of Nebraska -- a chaos of ochre-colored hills , of mountainous fragments fallen on the soil and broken in their fall . At a distance these blocks take the most fantastic shapes . Here and there amid this enormous game of knucklebones there could be traced the imaginary ruins of medieval cities with forts and dungeons , pepper-box turrets , and machicolated towers . And in truth these Bad Lands are an immense ossuary where lie bleaching in the sun myriads of fragments of pachyderms , chelonians , and even , some would have us believe , fossil men , overwhelmed by unknown cataclysms ages and ages ago .