... to take the straight forward road leading through the chain of Bluffs and descending by a nearer rout to the Platt again. This, we afterwards regretted as we got through the pass with great difficulty—we found a large freight [wagon] stopped in the pass, the mud being very deep. The axle of one wagon was broken and a dying ox lying crippled in the road—The bellowing of the Ox which reverberated along the bluff—and the croaking of the thousands of Ravens that were hovering over, had a gloomy and ominous sound. This pass is truly a wonder. The bluffs here form a semi circle and on each side rise up into huge towers which make the head dizzy to look up at. The passage through is level, but has been cut into deep ravines by the torrents which run down the sides of the Bluffs. The mystic spell that Scotts Bluff seemed to weave about early travelers continued unbroken during the following decade. Perhaps the high point in romantic imagination was reached in 1860 by the English adventurer, Richard Burton: ... In the dull uniformity of the prairies, it is a striking and attractive object, far excelling the castled crag of Drachenfels or any of the beauties of romantic Rhine.... As you approach within four or five miles, a massive medieval city gradually defines itself, clustering, with a wonderful fullness of detail, round a colossal fortress, and crowned with a royal castle.... At a nearer aspect again, the quaint illusion vanishes. The lines of masonry become yellow layers of boulder and pebble imbedded in a mass of stiff, tamped, bald, marly clay; the curtains and angles change to the gashings of the rain of ages, and the warriors are metamorphosed into dwarf cedars and dense shrubs, scattered singly over the surface.... [Illustration: _William H. Jackson painting of bull train in Mitchell Pass based on original sketch of 1866._] The Sioux uprising of the 1860’s kept pleasure travel to a minimum, but even U. S. soldiers, intent on hammering the redskins, gave pause to express wonder at “the Gibraltar of the Plains.” For the first time we have evidence of travelers clambering up the sloping side to the summit of the bluff, to survey the countryside. In 1862 Burlingame described the view as “a scene seldom vouchsafed to mortals.” The following year A. B. Ostrander, a drummer boy with the volunteer infantry, laboriously scaled the cliffs, then scrambled hastily down again to catch up with his regiment when he thought he saw Indians. Also in 1863 Benjamin M. Connor made note of the wind wailing dismally through the gap, which he erroneously called “Marshall’s Pass, for a captain of my company.” Guide Jim Bridger, who had been one of the first white men to see Scotts Bluff, back in the 1820’s, told Connor that the bluff “was named for a man who saved his life from pursuing Indians by taking refuge in the cliffs.” Bridger, who had been an associate of Hiram Scott, must have known better.