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Show 46 NATIONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE. which appears nearly level, except that from the top downward, there is a fissure or crack, reaching nearly one-third of its length. · .. . It resembles at a distance, a shot-tower, or one of those immense chimneys sometimes reared about factories, and can be seen a distance of fifty miles along the river. SCOTT'S BLUFFS. These bluffs are situated directly upon the south bank of the Platte, so near that the waters impinge against their nearly perpendicular sides, forcing the emigrant road aV\ray from the river, in and among the bluffs. Here is some of the most beautiful and picturesque scenery upon the whole route. It consists of a widely extended grassy plain, along which, for more than twenty miles, courses a range of isolated or .detached cliffs, of ne.arly eq~al bight; but of singular conformation. It appears as though portions of a once continuous rocky cliff or range, with perpendicular sides, had been cut away, and the detached portions entirely removed, down to a level with the grassy plain that now surrounds them. And thus they stand, in their vast proportions, some round, others nearly square, and lifting their tops four or five hundred feet upward, and crowned vvifh dome, an~ spire, and battlement, resembling a collection of ru1ns, of towns and castles of every conceivable form, and i~parting to the landscape a scene of sublimity and magnificence worthy their Builder. , NAT~ONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE. 47 They derive their name-it is said-from the fact, that here a man by the name of Scott, met with dtlth, CONVENT ROCK-SCOTT'S BLUFFS. under the following circumstances : A party of trappers l1ad been detained in the Indian country too late in the season to insure their safe return, if attended by the least impediment, that one of their number by the name of Scott, having wounded hilnself by an accidental discharge of his gun, and in a n1anner that must prove · fatal to him in a few days at furthest, insisted, and prevailed upon his companions to leave him-with a supply of provisions -to his fate, and save if p'1ssible, their own lives. His skeleton was found the next year, under a shelving po~·tion of the bluff near the river, 'vhere they had left him. |