Sunrise on the Plains of Nebraska

M u o « 5 £ u s H a I "-) < ir « xp pa n S ^ O _§ tfl ** £ -3 Pi G g ! O

°'HE Chimney Rock, or the Half-Way Post, as it was sometimes suggestively called, was a most picturesque object. It was one of the most noted land-marks to be seen upon the entire trip across the plains. After we had first sighted, through the western opening of a noon corral, the pale blue shaft, wavy through the haze that arose from the heated ground, it seemed to us that the slow-going oxen would never reach it ; or rather, that they would never arrive at the point on the road opposite that natural curiosity, for the emigrant trail passed several miles to the northward of the low range of bluffs of which the Chimney Rock is a part. One evening several members of our company tried to walk from our nearest camp to the terraced slopes of the chimney's base, but the distance proved too great. That was our lesson in the deceptiveness of space in that rarified atmosphere — the distance to hills and mountains. In the picture, on the foregoing page, the Chimney is shown as it appeared from the banks of the Lawrence Creek. An emigrant train — that under the command of Captain John D. Holladay, 1866, — is seen fording the shallow stream. The pioneers had made an early start, just as the light of the rising sun was breaking from behind a mass of clouds that lies along the eastern horizon. The captain was keeping a watchful eye upon the safe passage of each wagon through the water, for in the bed of the creek were quick-sands, and a stop was attended with danger. Eternal vigilance was the price that the captain must pay to bring his company safely over the wilderness of plains and mountains. — From the Old Journey, by Alfred Lambourne.