A Trip on the Prairie 235 



were scattered several hundred detached and isolated 

 buttes or cliffs of sandstone, each butte from fifteen 

 to fifty feet high, and from thirty to a couple of 

 hundred feet across. Some of them rose as sharp 

 peaks or ridges, or as connected chains, but much the 

 greater number had flat tops like little table-lands. 

 The sides were perfectly perpendicular, and were 

 cut and channeled by the weather into the most 

 extraordinary forms; caves, columns, battlements, 

 spires, and flying buttresses were mingled in the 

 strangest confusion. Many of the caves were worn 

 clear through the buttes, and they were at every 

 height in the sides, while ledges ran across the faces, 

 and shoulders and columns jutted out from the cor 

 ners. On the tops and at the bases of most of the 

 cliffs grew pine trees, some of considerable height, 

 and the sand gave everything a clean, white look. 



Altogether it was as fantastically beautiful a place 

 as I have ever seen: it seemed impossible that the 

 hand of man should not have had something to do 

 with its formation. There was a spring of clear cold 

 water a few hundred yards off, with good feed for 

 the horses round it; and we made our camp at the 

 foot of one of the largest buttes, building a roaring 

 pine-log fire in an angle in the face of the cliff, while 

 our beds were under the pine trees. It was the time 

 of the full moon, and the early part of the night 

 was clear. The flame of the fire leaped up the side 

 of the cliff, the red light bringing out into lurid and 

 ghastly relief the bold corners and strange-looking 

 escarpments of the rock, while against it the stiff 



