216 A Trip on the Prairie. 



at the bases of most of the cliffs grew pine trees, some of 

 considerable height, and the sand gave every thing 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 limbs of the pines stood out like rigid 

 bars of iron. Walking off out of sight of the circle of fire- 

 light, among the tall crags, the place seemed almost as 

 unreal as if we had been in fairy-land. The flood of clear 

 moonlight turned the white faces of the cliffs and the 

 grounds between them into shining silver, against which 

 the pines showed dark and sombre, while the intensely 

 black shadows of the buttes took on forms that were 

 grimly fantastic. Every cave or cranny in the crags 

 looked so black that it seemed almost to be thrown out 

 from the surface, and when the branches of the trees 

 moved, the bright moonlight danced on the ground as if 

 it were a sheet of molten metal. Neither in shape nor in 

 color did our surroundings seem to belong to the dull 

 gray world through which we had been travelling all day. 



