A MONUMENT. 91 



The banter was promptly accepted, and the " greenhorn," doffing hii 

 coat and hat, started in full expectation of winning the wager. B^ in 

 •tead of fifteen, it took him forty-five minutes to reach the spot! 



The day after passing the " Chimney," we entered a broad defile of 

 lofty ridges, and made camp. This locality is known as Scott'i Bluff 

 which is, properly speaking, a wing of the Rocky Mountains. 



From Ash creek to this place, an almost precipitous wall of arenaceoui 

 rock, limestone, and marl, shuts the high prairie fi-om the river bottoms 

 As the traveller proceeds, this wall or ledge gradually increases in height 

 and recedes from the river, sometimes to a distance of thirty or forty miles 

 til it unites in a chain of hills, many of which are covered with eturdj 

 pines, and others are mere heaps of naked sand or indurated earth. The 

 ridge then continues its coiu^e until it at length becomes united with th« 

 lateral chain of the Rocky Moxmtains, which boimds the " Plains of Lara 

 mie " upon the southeast 



At Scott's Bluff these hills crowd themselves abruptly towards th« 

 Platte, where they present a most romantic and picturesque sceneir. 



Our camp was in a rich opening, or valley, two miles wide, and walled 

 in upon the right and left by perpendicular masses of earth and rock, that 

 tower to a height of from three to eight hundred feet. In reaching it, the 

 trail bore leftward from the river, about seven miles, through a level 

 prairie, by which we were inducted to the vailey, without any perceptible 

 variation of its general surface. 



Near the entrance, upon pur left, the spectacle was grand and imposiiiff 

 beyond description. It seemed as if Nature, in mere sportiveness, had 

 thought to excel the noblest works of ait, and rear up a mimic city as the 

 grand metropolis of her empire. 



There stood the representations of palaces, with their domes and balus- 

 trades ; churches, with their spires and cupolas ; and streets, with tneir 

 gigantic dwellings, stores, work-shops, and ware-houses. And there, also, 

 were parks, pleasure-grounds, and public squares, all so admirably defined 

 by the agency of the winds and rains of ages, that the traveller might 

 readily imagine liimself to have arrived within the precincts of the desert- 

 ed city of some peopleless country, whose splendor and magnificence on 

 more than vied with tlie far-famed Pahnyra of the desert, even in its 

 days. 



To the right arose a pile of sand-rock and marl in pyramidal/ 

 three hundred feet high, that occupied its prairie site detached from .' 

 other eminence. 



Near this stood a more singular natural formation than any 

 f iously noticed. It described a complete circle, of one thousand fe 

 circumference, and attained an altitude of not far from four hundred fee 

 Its sides were of great regularity, and represented masses of solid mason- 

 work, rising abruptly till v/ithin sixty or seventy feet of tlie summit, where 

 they accline in a blunt, cone-like manner, reducing the periphery to on« 

 third that of its base. At this point is reposed a semi-spherical form, reg- 

 ularly jutting with a gradual swell upon all sides — then tapering to an oval 

 shape till near the apex, at whicii the whole mass is surmounted by a rude 

 imitation of sculptured flame, pointing upwards to the bud, as if this 



