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Show • • 42 NATIONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE. see, we recognized the orange colored ascelpias tuberosa, the lupin, and the golden coreopsis. Another brilliant flo"rer often seen, was the liatris spicata, and the pretty euphorbia marginata, with its silvery edge; these and many others were generally found along the banks of the streamR, and yet some times the almost barren sands would produce a cactus of singular form, and with a bloom of exquisite beauty. Before reaching the Humboldt, you will seem to have passed out of the region of flowers ; the lateness of the season and the heat, seem to have left only a few of the wild sunflower, and the orange colored lily, to greet the eye of the traveler, amid the tall grass of the Humboldt bottoms. COURT HOUSE ROCIC, OR SOLITARY TOWER. This magnif cent formation is situated upon the south NATIONAL W.A.GON ROAD GUIDE. 43 border of the Platte river, about two hundred and fifty miles west of Fort Kearny, and nearly eight miles to the south of the emigrant road, though it does not appear to be half that distance. It has doubtless derived its name from the peculiarity of its form as a natural object its colossal size, and remarkable isolation. Situated miles apart from any mountain range, this solitarv rock at a distance of six or tight miles, seems to rise u~ fro~ the grassy plain, with sides nearly perpendicular to the hight of nearly four hundred feet, and above this a vast dome: the whole when viewed from a distance, and from two or more points along the emigrant road, presents an outline so perfectly regular and rounded, and the whole formation so completely resembling an edifice of vast dimension, as to appear more like a ,~ork of art than nature .. As you approach nearer than three miles, irregularities appear upon its ·surface, which, with its ~loping abutments, in ridges around its base, not distinctly visible from the road, mar somewhat, upon a closer view, the beauty of the formation. But as a conspicuous and noted object, seen by the traveler, as he passes along the great plains, that here border the Platte river, the " Solitary Tower," as one of Nature's own will ever stand in th e fr ont rank for grandeur and_ mag'n ificencet ClliMNE"'f ROCK. Here is ~nqther . qf those r~markable natural forma- ~ f • \ I l ' t 1 , - |