Here are two famous objects; famous, at least, in those days, not far apart, and following each other in the book--"The Court House," and "The Chimney Rock." Distinctly I remember the day on which we first sighted the latter--a pale blue shaft above the plain. We had just formed the last semi-circle of our noon corral and through its western opening was seen the Chimney, wavy through the haze that arose from the heated ground. It was my father who pointed it out to me. It afterwards seemed to us that the slow-going oxen would never reach it; or, rather, that they would never arrive at the point in the road opposite that natural curiosity; for the emigrant trail passed several miles to the northward of the low range of bluffs of which "the Chimney Rock" is a part. One evening several of our company tried to walk from our nearest camp to the terraced hills that formed the Chimney's base, but the distance proved too great. That was one of our first lessons in the deceptiveness of space--the distance to hills and mountains. [Illustration: _Morning at Chimney Rock._] From the banks of Lawrence Creek, from where the sketch was made, the bluffs, and the Half-Way-Post, the name by which the Chimney is sometimes suggestively referred to, are most picturesque. Strings of wild ducks arose from the rushes of the creek side as our train approached. "Scott's Bluffs" make a very different picture from those of the O'Fallen's. The sedimentary heights of the former, with their strong resemblance to walls and towers, are shown in the sketch rosy with the light of the rising sun. In the middle distance, in a little swale of the picture, is a train corralled, the still blue smoke rising in many a straight column from the morning camp-fires. In the foreground are sun-flowers, a buffalo-skull among them. Ah! here is a sad, dark sketch--"Left by the Roadside." A tall, rank growth, and a low, half-sunken headboard are seen against the sky in which lingers yet a red flush of the twilight. Two or three stars shed their pale rays from afar, and one feels that the silence, is unbroken by even the faintest sigh of wind. But certainly there will come one soon, a long, shivering, almost moan-like sound, as the night wind begins to steal across the waste and gently stirs the prairie grass and flowers. Yes, after those years it is the Human Comedy; it is the never-ending drama! It is the wonder of that which grows upon one. It is the desires, hopes, trials, pleasures, sorrows of the race! It is the remembered action that interests me in these sketches. The book is filled with the transcripts of once noted places, but my mind, as I look upon them, is filled with thoughts of men and women. It is those who passed among the scenes who are of interest now. I recall the Pioneers themselves. I think of them, filled with hope, yet anxious, eager to begin the new life that lay before them.