Chapter 3

3

Wide prairies Vegetable productions Tabular hills Slabs of

sandstone Nebraska or Platte River Scanty fare Buffalo

skulls Wagons turned into boats Herds of buffalo Cliffs

resembling castles The chimney Scott's Bluffs Story connected

with them The bighorn or ahsahta Its nature and habits Difference

between that and the "woolly sheep," or goat of the mountains

FROM THE MIDDLE to the end of May, Captain Bonneville pursued a

western course over vast undulating plains, destitute of tree or

shrub, rendered miry by occasional rain, and cut up by deep

water-courses where they had to dig roads for their wagons down

the soft crumbling banks and to throw bridges across the streams.

The weather had attained the summer heat; the thermometer

standing about fifty-seven degrees in the morning, early, but

rising to about ninety degrees at noon. The incessant breezes,

however, which sweep these vast plains render the heats

endurable. Game was scanty, and they had to eke out their scanty

fare with wild roots and vegetables, such as the Indian potato,

the wild onion, and the prairie tomato, and they met with

quantities of "red root," from which the hunters make a very

palatable beverage. The only human being that crossed their path

was a Kansas warrior, returning from some solitary expedition of

bravado or revenge, bearing a Pawnee scalp as a trophy.

The country gradually rose as they proceeded westward, and their

route took them over high ridges, commanding wide and beautiful

prospects. The vast plain was studded on the west with

innumerable hills of conical shape, such as are seen north of the

Arkansas River. These hills have their summits apparently cut off

about the same elevation, so as to leave flat surfaces at top. It

is conjectured by some that the whole country may originally have

been of the altitude of these tabular hills; but through some

process of nature may have sunk to its present level; these

insulated eminences being protected by broad foundations of solid

rock.

Captain Bonneville mentions another geological phenomenon north

of Red River, where the surface of the earth, in considerable

tracts of country, is covered with broad slabs of sandstone,

having the form and position of grave-stones, and looking as if

they had been forced up by some subterranean agitation. "The

resemblance," says he, "which these very remarkable spots have in

many places to old church-yards is curious in the extreme. One

might almost fancy himself among the tombs of the pre-Adamites."

On the 2d of June, they arrived on