might do their own work. He pointed out to Stansbury a good wagon which he had bought from discouraged emigrants for seventy-five cents. He kept a considerable stock-in-trade of this sort, which he had acquired through the misfortunes and discouragements of travelers.
   In his return itinerary Stansbury records that he found on Scotts Bluff a small rivulet, a row of old deserted houses, a spring at the foot of Sandstone Bluffs, where the road crosses the ridge, cedars on the bluffs and good grass on the plains.
   Bryant describes this remarkable formation as follows:

    The bluff is a large and isolated pile of sand-cliffs and soft sandstone. It exhibits all the architectural shapes of arch, pillar, dome, spire, minaret, temple, gothic castle and modern fortification. These, of course, are upon a scale far surpassing the constructing efforts of human strength and energy. The tower of Babel, if its builders had been permitted to proceed in their ambitious undertaking, would be but a feeble imitation of these stupendous structures of nature. While surveying this scenery, which is continuous for twenty or thirty miles, the traveler involuntarily imagines himself in the midst of the desolate and deserted ruins of vast cities, to which Nineveh, Thebes and Babylon were pigmies in grandeur and magnificence. The trail leaves the river as we approach "Scott's Bluff" and runs over a smooth valley in the rear of the bluff seven or eight miles. From this level plain we ascended some distance, and found a faint spring of water near the summit of the ridge, as cold as melted ice.

   From the extreme height of this ridge the travelers were able to see the peaks of the Rocky mountains; and Laramie's Peak, one hundred and fifty miles distant, was distinctly visible. This author gives perhaps as nearly authentic a story of the tragedy which gave the name to the bluff as can now be told:

    A party of some five or six trappers, in the employment of the American Fur Company, were returning to the "settlements," under the command of a man -- a noted mountaineer -- named Scott. They attempted to perform the Journey in boats, down the Platte. The current of the river became so shallow that they could not navigate it. Scott was seized with a disease which rendered him helpless. The men with him left him in the boat, and when they returned to their employers, reported that Scott had died on the journey, and that they had buried him on the banks of the Platte. The next year a party of hunters, traversing this region, discovered a human skeleton wrapped in blankets, which from the clothing and papers found upon it, was immediately recognized as being the remains of Scott. He had been deserted by his men, but afterwards recovering his strength sufficiently to leave the boat, he had wandered into the bluffs where he died, where his bones were found, and which now bears his name.

   As Captain Bonneville learned the story in 1832, Scott traveled sixty miles eastward before he succumbed at the bluffs.
   While those early travelers were keen and intelligent observers of the remarkable mountain region of Nebraska, it was left to the recent work of scientific men to furnish accurate information and specific data concerning it. Court House Rock is now about five miles from the river, its height above the sea level is 4,100 feet; and above the level of the river, 440 feet. Its upper part of about 160 feet is of sandstone and the rest of pink Bad Lands clay. Chimney Rock is somewhat less than two miles from the river; its height above sea level is 4,242 feet, and above the river, 340 feet. The chimney proper is about 50 feet in diameter at the base, 142 feet high, and is of sandy formation. A part of the upper forty feet of the chimney has been chipped off. The rest of the rock is of pink clay or marl, interbedded with volcanic ash. One of these beds is five feet in thickness. The varying colors of white and red attributed to these elevations by the early travelers were owing to the light to which they were exposed when they saw them. In the clear sunlight the color was white. Geologists suppose that the volcanic ash was blown across the plains from the far distant mountain regions of Arizona. Wind and rain tint the whole surface of these remarkable rocks with this whitish ash.
   Scotts Bluff is about three-quarters of a mile from the river; 4,662 feet in height above sea level, and nearly 800 feet above the river. The upper 282 feet is of sandy and concretionary formation, below which are pink Bad Lands

clays or marls, with two beds of white volcanic ash. This bluff is in Scotts Bluff county, and Court House Rock and Chimney Rock are in Cheyenne county. The highest peak in the range is Wild Cat mountain -- 5,084 feet -- in Banner county. The highest elevation of these mountains, in Nebraska, is in the extreme northwest of Kimball county where they reach the height of 5,300 feet.
   It is said that the Oregon trail in Nebraska is entirely obliterated. In September, 1873, the writer of this history crossed it near Steele City, and it was then a gorgeous band of sunflowers, stretching on a direct line northwestwardly as far as the vision could reach -- a most impressive scene. But. the route may always be described generally by the principal rivers as follows: The Kansas, the Little Blue, the Platte, the Sweetwater, the Big Sandy, the Green, the Bear, the Snake, the Boise, the Grande Ronde, the Umatilla, the Columbia. The northern trail from old Council Bluff kept to the north of the Platte, crossing just beyond the mouth of the Laramie river. This northern route probably came to be considerably used about 1840. When Frémont crossed the Platte on his return, twenty-one miles below the junction of the north and south forks, he found on the north side "an excellent, plainly beaten road." Frémont crossed the Loup river below its forks, while the earlier Oregon trail crossed the forks above the junction. Subsequently there were branches from Florence, Omaha, Bellevue, Plattsmouth, Nebraska City, and Brownville, and from St. Joseph and Fort Leavenworth below the Nebraska line. They flourished most from the time of the gold discoveries in the Pike's Peak region until the Pacific roads were built.
   This wonderful highway was in the broadest sense a national road, although not surveyed or built under the auspices of the government. It was the route of a national movement -- the migration of a people seeking to avail itself of opportunities which have come but rarely in the history of the world, and which will never come again. It was a route, every mile of which has been the scene of hardship and suffering, yet of high purpose and stern. determination. Only on the steppes of Siberia can so long a highway be found over which traffic has moved by a continuous journey from one end to the other. Even in Siberia there are occasional settlements along the route, but on the Oregon trail in 1843 the traveler saw no evidence of civilized habitation except four trading posts, between Independence and Fort Vancouver.
   As a highway of travel the Oregon trail is the most remarkable known to history. Considering the fact that it originated with the spontaneous use of travelers; that no transit ever located a foot of it; that no level established its grades; that no engineer sought out the fords or built any bridges or surveyed the mountain passes; that there was no grading to speak of nor any attempt at metalling the road-bed; the general good quality of this two thousand miles of highway will seem most extraordinary. Father De Smet, who was born in Belgium, the home of good roads, pronounced the Oregon trail one of the finest highways in the world. At the proper season of the year this was undoubtedly true. Before the prairies became too dry, the, natural turf formed the best roadway for horses to travel on that has probably ever been known. It was amply hard to sustain traffic, yet soft enough to be easier to the feet than even the most perfect asphalt pavement. Over such roads, winding ribbon-like through the verdant prairies, amid the profusion of spring flowers, with grass so plentiful that the animals reveled in its abundance, and game everywhere greeted the hunter's rifle, and finally, with pure water in the streams, the traveler sped his way with a feeling of joy and exhilaration. But not so when the prairies became dry and parched, the road filled with stifling dust, the stream beds mere dry ravines, or carrying only alkaline water which could not be used, the game all gone to more hospitable sections, and the summer sun pouring down its heat with torrid intensity. It was then that the trail became a highway of desolation, strewn with abandoned property, the skeletons of horses, mules, and oxen, and, alas! too often, with freshly made mounds and head boards that told the pitiful tale of sufferings too great to be endured. If the trail was the scene of romance, adventure, pleasure, and excitement, so it was marked in every mile of its course by human misery, tragedy, and death.
   The immense travel which in later years passed over the trail carved it into a deep furrow, often with several parallel tracks making a total width of a hundred feet or more. It was an astonishing spectacle even to white men when seen for the first time.

   It may be easily imagined how great an impression the sight of this road must have made upon the minds of the Indians. Father De Smet has recorded some interesting observations upon this point.
   In 1851 he traveled in company with a large number of Indians from the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers to Fort Laramie, where a great council was held in that year to form treaties with the several tribes. Most of these Indians had not been in that section before, and were quite unprepared for what they saw. "Our Indian companions," says Father De Smet, "who had never see but the narrow hunting paths by which they transport themselves and their lodges, were filled with admiration on seeing this noble highway, which is as smooth as a barn floor swept by the winds, and not a blade of grass can shoot up on it on account of the continual passing. They conceived a high idea of the countless White Nation, as they express it. They fancied that all had gone over that road, and that an immense void must exist in the land of the rising sun. Their contenances (sic) testified evident incredulity when I told them that their exit was in nowise perceived in the land of the whites. They styled the route the Great Medicine Road of the Whites."³⁵
   Over much of its length the trail is now abandoned, but in many places it is not yet effaced from the soil, and may not be for centuries. There are few more impressive sights than portions of this old highway to-day. It still lies there upon the prairie, deserted by the traveler, an everlasting memorial of the human tide which once filled it to overflowing. Nature herself has helped to perpetuate this memorial, for the prairie winds, year by year, carve the furrow more deeply, and the wild sunflower blossoms along its course, as if in silent memory of those who sank beneath its burdens . . .
   Railroads practically follow the old line from Independence to Casper, Wyoming, some fifty miles east of Independence Rock; and from Bear river on the Utah-Wyoming line to the mouth of the Columbia. The time is not distant when the intermediate space will be occupied, and possibly a continuous and unbroken movement of trains over the entire line may some day follow. In a future still more remote there may be realized a project which is even now being agitated, of building a magnificent national road along this line as a memorial highway which shall serve the future and commemorate the past. ³⁶
   There were other journeys of minor importance through Nebraska to the far Northwest, previous to Frémont's return from his first expedition, when the trans-Missouri region was no longer an unknown country. About 1832 a strong movement began for sending missionaries to the Indian tribes beyond the Rocky mountains. In 1834 the Methodists sent Jason and Daniel Lee; and in 1835 the Presbyterians sent Marcus Whitman and Rev. Samuel Parker, who started from Bellevue on the 22d of June with a caravan of the American Fur Company led by Lucien Fontenelle. The party first traveled to the Elkhorn river, which they followed ten miles, then followed Shell creek "a good distance." They crossed the Loup at the Pawnee villages near the junction of the forks, then went southwest to the Platte river, which they followed to the forks, and then proceeded along the north fork.
   In his journal³⁷ Parker relates that his party crossed the Elkhorn on the 25th of June, 1835. "For conveyance over this river we constructed a boat of a wagon body so covered with undressed skins as to make it nearly water-tight. The method was very good." This appears to have been a favorite method of fording streams; for the first wagon train that crossed the Plains of which we have an account that of Captain Bonneville, in 1832 --forded the Platte in the same way. The wagons, "dislodged from the wheels, were covered with buffalo hides and besmeared with a compound of tallow and ashes, thus forming rude boats."³⁸ Mr. Parker tells us that

   The manner of our encamping is to form a large hollow square, encompassing an area of about an acre having the river on one side; three wagons forming a part of another side, coming down to the river; and three more in the same manner on the opposite side; and the packages so arranged in parcels, about three rods apart, as to fill up the rear and the sides not occupied by the wagons. The horses and mules, near the middle of the day, are turned out under guard to feed for two hours, and the same again towards night, until after sunset, when they are taken up and brought within the hollow square, and fastened with

   The original route of the Oregon Trail from the south fork to the north fork of the Platte river, by way of Ash Hollow, descends northward from the plain, 3,763 feet above sea level, four miles to the river bottom, at an elevation of 3,314 feet. From the head of the Hollow, the trail, still visible, wound to the left about a mile along the sharp-backed ridges, then dropped by a very steep descent eastward into the Hollow, which here widens into a level valley from a quarter to half a mile wide. The spring, a luxury to the emigrants, still bubbles up strongly a quarter of a mile from the mouth of the Hollow, and at the base of a cliff about 100 feet high, as shown in the middle picture, The cedar and ash trees at one time abundant here all have been cut away. Marks of Fort Grattan, occupied as a post in 1855, are visible near the river north of the east side of the mouth of the Hollow. On the west side of the mouth of the Hollow are the modest gravestones of Rachel Patterson, a girl of nineteen, who died in 1849, and of two infant children.
   The figure on the hill is that of Mr. Alberts, editor of the MORTON HISTORY.

ropes twelve feet long to pickets driven firmly into the ground. The men are divided into companies, stationed at the several parcels of goods and wagons, where they wrap themselves in their blankets and rest for the night; the whole, however, are formed into six divisions to keep guard, relieving each other every two hours. This is to prevent hostile Indians from falling upon us by surprise, or coming into the tent by stealth and taking away either horses or packages of goods.
   The Pawnees were evidently the same troublesome, thieving creatures at the time of their first relations with white men as they proved to be down through territorial times. On the 2d of July Parker records³⁹ that, "these Indians were going out upon their summer hunt by the same route we were pursuing, and were not willing we should go on before them lest we should frighten away the buffalo." And again, July 6th: "We were prevented from making the progress we might have done if the Indians would have permitted us to go on and leave them. The men of the caravan began to complain of the delay, and had reason to do so, having nothing to eat but boiled corn and no way to obtain anything more before finding buffalos." And then, July 9th, we have a hint of that irrepressible spirit which was soon to force the Indians out and away from further opportunity for interference; for "Captain Fontenelle, by a large present, purchased of the Indians the privilege of going on tomorrow without them." But "our men could hardly have been kept in subordination if they had not consented." On the 14th of July "the announcement of buffalo spread cheerfulness and animation through the whole caravan and to men whose very life depended on the circumstances it was no indifferent event. From the immense herd of these wild animals we were to derive our subsistence."
   Francis Parkman, the noted historian, traveled over the Oregon trail, starting from Leavenworth in May, 1846. Like every other observant traveler, he makes note of the Pawnee trails leading from their villages on the Loup and the Platte to the southwestward hunting grounds. The universal notice of these trails, which appear to have extended as far as the Smoky Hill river, proves that they must have been well-defined. Parkman expresses the difference in the impression made upon travelers by the Plains and by the mountain country, by noting that the trip from Fort Leavenworth to Grand island was regarded as the more tedious; while that from Fort Laramie west was the more arduous. By this time the principal points in the Oregon trail had come to be permanently fixed, and Parkman says, "We reached the south fork of the Platte at the usual fording place." The trail had also become a busy highway by 1846, for Parkman tells us that the spring of that year was a busy season in the city of St. Louis. "Not only were emigrants from every part of the country preparing for the journey to Oregon and Calfornia (sic) but an unusual number of traders were making ready their wagons and outfits for Santa Fé. The hotels were crowded and the gunsmiths and saddlers were kept constantly at work preparing arms and equipments for the different parties of travelers. Steamboats were leaving the levee and passing up the Missouri, crowded with passengers on their way to the frontier." Parkman adds his testimony as to the illusory notion of the navigability of the Platte in an account of the misadventures of a fleet of eleven boats laden with furs which were attempting to make use of that treacherous stream as a highway: "Fifty times a day the boats had been aground; indeed, those who navigate the Platte invariably spend half their time on sand-bars. Two or three boats, the property of private traders, afterward separating from the rest, got hopelessly involved in the shallows, not very far from the Pawnee villages, and were soon surrounded by a swarm of the inhabitants. They carried off everything that they thought valuable, including most of the robes; and amused themselves by tying up the men left on guard and soundly whipping them with sticks."⁴⁰
   Bryant testifies to the futility of successfully attempting to navigate the Platte even with the shallow Mackinaw boats. Below the forks he met two parties with these craft laden

with buffalo skins and bales of furs. The men were obliged to jump into the stream very frequently to push the boats over the bars, and it would often require three or four hours to cover a single mile.
   These incidents may be coupled in an interesting way with the serious attempts to navigate the Platte in the later territorial times.
   Bayard Taylor, in his Eldorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire, gives the following vividly realistic description of the part which Nebraska was playing in the great drama of California emigration:

   The great starting point for this route was Independence, Missouri, where thousands were encamped during the month of April, waiting until the grass should be sufficiently high for their cattle, before they ventured on the broad ocean of the Plains. From the first of May to the first of June, company after company took its departure from the frontier of civilization, till the emigrant trail from Ft. Leavenworth, on the Missouri, to Ft. Laramie at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, was one long line of mule trains and wagons. The rich meadows of the Nebraska or Platte, were settled for the time, and a single traveler could have journeyed for the space of a thousand miles, as certain of his lodgings and regular meals as if he were riding through the old agricultural districts of the Middle States. The wandering tribes of Indians on the Plains -- the Pawnees, Sioux, and Arapahoes -- were alarmed and bewildered by this strange apparition. They believed they were about to be swept away forever from their hunting grounds and grass. As the season advanced and the great body of emigrants got under way, they gradually withdrew from the vicinity of the trail, and betook themselves to grounds which the former did not reach. All conflicts with them were thus avoided, and the emigrants passed the Plains with perfect immunity from their hostile and thievish visitations.
   Another and more terrible scourge, however, was doomed to fall upon them. The cholera, ascending the Mississippi from New Orleans, reached St. Louis about the time of their departure from Independence, and overtook them before they were fairly embarked on the wilderness. The frequent rains of the early spring, added to the hardship and exposure of their travel, prepared the way for its ravages, and the first three or four hundred miles were marked by graves. It is estimated that about four thousand persons perished from this cause.

   Willam Kelly observed Fort Kearney with foreign contemptuousness, thus: "We reached Fort Kearney early in the evening -- if fort it can be called -- where the States have stationed a garrison of soldiers, in a string of log huts, for the protection of the emigrants; and a most unsoldierly looking lot they were - - unshaven, unshorn, with patched uniforms, and lounging gait. Both men and officers were ill off for some necessaries, such as flour and sugar, the privates being most particular in their inquiries after whiskey."⁴¹
   Fort Kearney. Stansbury, who reached Fort Kearney on the 19th of June, gives this description of the fort: "The post at present consists of a number of long, low buildings, constructed principally of adobe, or sun-dried bricks, with nearly flat roofs; a large hospital tent; two or three workshops, enclosed by canvas walls; storehouses constructed in the same manner; one or two long adobe stables, with roofs of brush; and tents for the accommodation of horses and men." He speaks of the road over the prairies as being "already broad and well beaten as any turnpike in our country." He says of the emigrant's wagon that "it is literally his home. In it he carries his all, and it serves him as a tent, kitchen, parlor, and bedroom, and not infrequently as a boat to ferry him over an otherwise impassable stream. Many have no other shelter from the storm during the whole journey, and most of these vehicles are extremely tight, roomy, and comfortable." He complains of the breaking out of skin diseases on account of the lack of fresh meat and vegetables; and as to game, "Ashambault, our guide, told me that the last time he passed this spot (the valley of the Platte near the eastern end of Grand island) the whole of the immense Plain as far as the eye could reach, was black with the herds of buffalo. Now not so much as one is to be seen; they have fled before the advancing tide of emigration." The emigrants were obliged to go four or five miles from the line of travel