A MONUMENT. 61 



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

 coat and hat, started in full expectation of winning the wager. But, in- 

 stead of fifteen, it tooLhim 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's BiuflT, 

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



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

 rock, limestone, and marl, shuts the high prairie from 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, 

 till it unites in a chain of hills, many of which are covered with stiydy 

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

 ridge then continues its course until it at leno-th becomes united with the 

 lateral chain of the Rocky Mountains, which bounds the " Plains of Lara- 

 mie " upon the southeast. 



At Scott's Bluff these hills crowd themselves abruptly towards the 

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



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 valley, without any perceptible 

 variation of its general surface. 



Near the entrance, upon our left, the spectacle was grand and imposing 

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

 thought to excel the noblest works of art, 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 their 

 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 himself to have arrived within the precincts of the desert- 

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

 more than vied with the far-famed Palmyra of the desert, even in its best 

 days. 



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

 three hundred feet high, that occupied its prairie site detached from hill or 

 other eminence. 



Near this stood a more singular natural formation than any pre 

 viously noticed. It described a complete circle, of one thousand feet in 

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

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

 work, rising abruptly till within sixty or seventy feet of the summit, where 

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

 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 w^hich the whole mass is surmounted by a rude 

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



