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Show I 44 NATIONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE. tions that give to this country a strange and peculiar interE; st. It is situated three miles to the south of the emigrant road, and about twelve miles from Court House CHIMNEY ROCK. rock. Instead of being a granite column as many travelers have asserted, it appears a kind of earthy liruestone or marl, or a species of soapstone, easily cut with a knife, NATIONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE. 45 and is the same as that of Court I-Iouse rock, Scott's Bluff::;, and other formations in the vicinity; all of which are sufficiently soft to be worn by the action of the elements, into the 1nany fantastic shapes they assume. Approaching Chimney Rock, you gradually rise an immense mound, or roll of the grassy plain, of more than a hundred feet in height above the general level, to the foot of an irregular, circular pyramid of soft rock, covering six or eight acres, the sides of which have about the usual slope that steep, loo.se sand banks assume, and which rises to the bight of nearly one hundred and fifty feet. The visitor can, with somf' labor, but with little or no danger, ascend this part of the structure upon the east side, to the top of the pyratnicl, and to the foot of the base that supports the upright column. This base is nearly square, about forty feet on either side, and twenty feet high. The top of this base can be re~cched upon one, the south side only, by rough and irregular steps, that have been cut into its nearly perpendicular sides. We have now reached the foot of the shaft or column, and this is as high as ever man trod with safety. A few daring or fool-hardy adventurers however, have, by cutting foot and. hand-holds in the soft rock, raised themselves a few feet in order to inscribe their names the ' highest. From this point, a perpendicular, rough shaft or col-umn, nearly thirty feet square, rises upward over one hundred feet, and holds its full size to the very top, I J' : |