68 "BLUFFS." 



Another class of these impassable natural fortresses 

 consists of lines of cliffs, or " bluffs " as they are called 

 in America, which are sometimes found to extend as 

 a gigantic barrier across the plains, through a great 

 extent of country; and these, as examples of the work 

 of The Great Architect of Nature, are if possible even 

 more wonderful than the rock-hewn canon; because in 

 the latter case there is at least some apparent cause, 

 so plain that even the meanest intellect can understand 

 it, which has evidently been the medium by which 

 these channels have been excavated. But how shall 

 we account for these immense walls of rock, which 

 divide one table land of the plains from another? As 

 there is no immediate apparent cause which can 

 account for their existence, people are apt to pass these 

 lines of frowning battlements without ever giving a 

 thought to the means by which they were formed. 

 " They were always there," it will be said, and it would 

 be a waste of time to try and fathom the mysteries 

 of the incomprehensible. 



The wily Indian, for instance, whose whole life has 

 been passed in the constant endeavour to interpret the 

 signs of the wilderness, will from age to age pass and 

 repass along these grand escarpments, and his trained 

 vision will note every little item, which, though often 

 quite invisible until pointed out to the unpractised eye, 

 yet to his sharpened senses they will afford irrefragable 

 evidence of everything that has happened in the locality 

 for many days before he passed there as plainly as if 

 he had been there to see it. 



For neither man nor beast can pass without leaving 

 a mark. Thus, the faintest impression in the sand, a 

 pebble turned over upon its bed, a few blades of grass 





