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arson. But the noble tree is gone, and there is now 200 miles without a shade.
From the Platte forks up to this point, the valley is narrow, from 2 to 6 miles wide, and more uneven, and deeper cut in the surface formation, the high lands being in some cases per- haps over 200 feet high. These are a mixture of clay and sand, and it is curious and interesting to see what freaks the water played here during the glacial period. The bluffs form the most striking feature in the country. They are the broken hills lying along the margin of the valley, more or less detached from the great mass of clay and sand that forms the upper and highest surface.
There are some grand bluffs just below here, on the south side of the river. About 60 miles below is the first deemed worthy of note on our guides court house bluff. At a dis- tance of 15 miles it presents a very fine appearance seeming like a great regular structure of brick with a low dome, but too massive and heavy in its form to be pleasing. At a view of 6 miles, our nearest point, it is unshapely and with a little feeling of disappointment you turn to those that stand out in finer proportions, farther up the stream. Chimney bluff, 10 miles ahead, is a tunnel shaped mass of clay, perhaps 170 feet high, of really fine shape, and its center being a shaft probably 60 feet high and seemingly not more than four feet in diam- eter. They are both entirely naked of vegetation and the rains are slowly washing them down. The gutters in the surface of the court house bluff, give to its walls, at a distance, the appearance of a great columnade, and the effect is so great that you almost look for human forms about it and among its columns. 20 miles still farther up is a bluff Scotts bluff the grandest object of the kind I ever saw. It is nearly divided but encloses a fine green area like a court, around which, except on the east, rises what seems like an imposing pile of regal buildings in the style of the earlier days of monarchy. It appears as if two immense structures had been raised in the infancy of architecture, and additions had been made showing
