derful formations, Scott's Bluff, Courthouse Rock and Chimney
Rock, are standing now, even as they did in the early '50's. Courthouse
Rock a little way off really looked a credit to its name. It was a huge
affair, and, in its ragged, irregular outline, seemed to impart to the
traveller a sense of protection and fair dealing.

Scott's Bluff was an immense formation, and sometime during its history
nature's forces had cleft it in two parts, making an avenue through its
center at least one hundred feet wide, through which we all passed, as
the trail led through instead of around the bluff.

Chimney Rock in outline resembled an immense funnel. The whole thing was
at least two hundred feet in height, the chimney part, starting about
midway, was about fifty feet square; its top sloped off like the roof
of a shanty. Beginning at the top, the chimney was split down about one
quarter of its length. On the perpendicular part of this rock a good
many names had been cut by men who had scaled the base, and, reaching as
far on to the chimney as they could, cut their names into its surface.
So clear was the atmosphere that when several miles distant we could see
the rock and men who looked like ants as they crept and crawled up its
sides.

As one stops to decipher the inscriptions upon this boulder the sense of
distance is entirely lost, and the traveller finds himself trying to
compare it with that other obelisk in Central Park, New York. As he
thinks about them, the truth comes gradually to him that there can be no
comparison, since the one is a masterpiece from the hand of Nature and
the other is but a work of art.

These formations are not really rock, but of a hard marle substance, and
while each is far remote from the others, the same colored strata is
seen in all of them, showing conclusively that once upon a time the
surface of the ground in that region was many feet higher than it was
in 1852 or than it is today, and that by erosion or upheaval large
portions of the soil were displaced and carried away, these three chunks
remaining intact and as specimens of conditions existing many centuries
ago.

I have been through the art galleries of our own country and through
many of those in Europe; I have seen much of the natural scenery in the
Old World as well as in the New; but not once have I seen anything which
surpassed in loveliness and grandeur the pictures which may be seen
throughout Nature's gallery in Nebraska and th