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 of our company tried to walk from our nearest camp to the terraced hills that formed the Chimney’s base, but the distance proved too great. That was one of our first lessons in the deceptiveness of space—the distance to hills and mountains.

Morning at Chimney Rock.

From the banks of Lawrence Creek, from where the sketch was made, the bluffs, and the Half-Way-Post, the name by which the Chimney is sometimes suggestively referred to, are most picturesque. Strings of wild ducks arose from the rushes of the creek side as our train approached.

“Scott’s Bluffs” make a very different picture from those of the O’Fallen’s. The sedimentary heights of the former, with their strong resemblance to walls and towers, are shown in the sketch rosy with the light of the rising sun. In the middle distance, in a little swale of the picture, is a train corralled, the still blue smoke rising in many a straight column from the morning camp-fires. In the foreground are sun-flowers, a buffalo-skull among them.

Ah! here is a sad, dark sketch—“Left by the Roadside.” A tall, rank growth, and a low, half-sunken headboard are seen against the sky in which lingers yet a red flush of the twilight. Two or three stars shed their pale rays from afar, and one feels that the silence, is unbroken by even the faintest sigh of wind. But certainly there will come one soon, a long, shivering, almost moan-like sound, as the night wind begins to steal across the waste and gently stirs the prairie grass and flowers.

Yes, after those years it is the Human Comedy; it is the never-ending drama! It is the wonder of that which grows upon one. It is the desires, hopes, trials, pleasures, sorrows of the race! It is the remembered action that interests me in these sketches. The book is filled with the transcripts of once noted places, but my mind, as I look upon them, is filled with thoughts of men and women. It is those who passed among the scenes who are of interest now. I recall the Pioneers themselves. I think of them, filled with hope, yet anxious, eager to begin the new life that lay before them.

The action! The search for the Fountain of Youth, the desire for knowledge, the thirst for gold, these have led men into the wilds; it has taken them to brave unknown dangers in unknown lands. Yes, these, the Propaganda and the love of Freedom, but neither is stronger than the desire for Religious Liberty. Ponce de Leon in the Land of Flowers; Lewis and Clark making their way along the Oregon, the Catholic Fathers, the gold-seekers of California, and the Puritans of New England—these are our examples. And like the latter were the Pioneers who preceded us along our way. And our company, too, such it was that led them. Near the frontier I had looked into a deserted cabin—it revealed the ending of a drama. He who would have found the magic waters, the home and the gold-seeker left behind them many a lonely grave. The Propagandist, the Lover of Freedom left their bones in many an unknown spot. And the Pioneers? They, too, must leave their dead. He who built that deserted cabin had met with failure,—death was the end. But the seekers of Religious Liberty? Surely they must have found the greater consolation in the hour of trial; to them must have come more quickly the thought of peace.

Action! It is true; one might have become easily wearied of the monotonous trip. The shifting panorama might have become monotonous in its shifting. Monotonous, I mean, were it not for, I repeat the word—the action. The plains, the streams, the rocks, the hills, all became important because these led the way. Ever my thought is of the road.

Countless in numbers almost were the graves, on plain and mountain, those silent witnesses of death by the way. The mounds were to be seen in all imaginable places. Each day we passed them, singly or in groups, and sometimes, nay, often, one of our own company was left behind to swell the number. By the banks of streams, on grassy hillocks, in the sands, beneath groves of trees, or among piles of rock, the graves were made. We left the new mounds to be scorched by the sun, beaten upon by the tempests, or for beauty or desolation to gather around as it had about many of the older ones. Sometimes when we camped the old graves would be directly alongside the wagons. I recall sitting by one that was thickly covered with grass and without a headboard while I ate my evening meal, and of sleeping by it at night. One remains in my mind as a very soothing little picture, a child’s grave; and it was screened around with a thicket of wild rose that leaned lovingly over it, while the mound itself was overgrown with bright, green moss. I fancied then that the parents of that child were they yet living, the mother, who, no doubt, had left that grave with such agony of heart, such blinding or tearless grief, would have liked, indeed, to have heard the sweet singing of the wild birds in the rose thicket, and have seen how daintily nature had decked that last bed of the loved one.

How painful were the circumstances attending the first burial in our train. A woman died one evening, we were about ten days out, just as the moon had risen over the prairies, and swiftly the tidings spread through the camp. Next morning, it was the Sabbath Day, she was buried, laid to rest on a low, grassy hill top near the banks of a stream. Never can I forget the grief of her children as the body of their mother was lowered into the ground. I can hear their cries yet, those cries that they gave, as they were led away, and their wagon departed with the rest. A network of stakes was placed across the grave to keep away the robber wolves; a short, short sermon was preached, a hymn was then sung, accompanied by the plaintive wailing of a clarinet, and prayer made to the services a solemn close.

That first death made a sad impression upon us. But after a while the burials from our company had become so frequent, that they lost much of their saddening power; or, rather, we refused to retain so deeply the sadness, throwing it off in self defense.

The outline which follows brings up a different train of thought—“Camp material abandoned after an attack by Indians.” The ground is littered with all sorts of indescribable things. Panic is evident in the reckless tossing away of every kind of articles; anything to lighten the loads, so that the fear-struck emigrants could hurry forward. This was the train immediately preceding ours, and a couple of days later we passed one of those prairie letters—an ox-shoulder blade or skull—on which was written:

“Captain Chipman’s train passed here
August 14th, 1866.
8 deaths,
90 head of cattle driven away by the Indians.
Great scare in camp.”

Apropos of alarms from Indians there is a rapidly executed subject, from memory the next day, that brings back a night of peril and sorrow. It was on the western slope of the Black Hills, and there were four wagons of us belated from the general train. We were the last five on the right-wing, and the right-wing was the latter half of the train that night, so, practically, we were alone. There was a dead woman in the wagon next to