the general opinion of all at that time, making the best calculations we could make, because we could not climb it, that Chimney Rock was three hundred feet above the bed of the river. We estimated the height of the chimney itself to be eighty-five feet. Elston said that it was the belief of the trappers that during the last fifteen years it had crumbled down from the top about thirty-five feet. The chimney was of a square appearance, and we estimated it to be thirty by fifty feet through. It is situated three miles from the river and a third of a mile from the main bluff. The grand plateau back of it was projected out into a peninsula, which threw a bold headland towards the river. A vertical view of this headland from above it would make it look something like a written letter I, and the Chimney Rock was the dot above the 'I' like this: OUTLINE OF BLUFF, CHIMNEY ROCK; ALCOHOL BUTTE; SCOTT'S BLUFFS. The road is marked by dotted line, and on the right of the picture runs through the gap in Scott's Bluffs. Next is Alcohol Butte.
Chimney Rock had at one time been the terminus of this projected headland, but had been worn away from it so that it stood out alone as a conspicuous feature of the landscape. It is nothing but clay, but it can be seen plainly from Scott's Bluffs, coming east. It is visible fully twenty miles, and when first seen it emerges from the atmosphere which has shrouded it. The trappers said that it could be faintly seen several miles west of Scott's Bluffs, coming east, which would make it visible twenty-four or twenty-five miles. It is first seen going west, from the summit of the hill a mile and a half southeast of Mud Springs.
Court House Rock is first seen from the west five miles west of Chimney Rock, being twenty-three miles distant. As that country down the valley is quite level, to make an object visible at twenty-three miles it must be nearly three hundred and fifty feet high. We marched on down, and halted at Punkin Creek, two miles from Court House Rock. I have already described Court House Rock. I do not remember of a march that was so thrilling and entertaining as the march down from Laramie. Everything was so absolutely wild. There was nothing there but nature as originally created. The scenery was the handiwork of the Almighty, and a man as he rode along knew that he, the man, was the master of the situation, and that the whole business belonged to the Almighty and him. The men in the ranks enjoyed it as much as anyone. They thought they were leaving it for good, and they drank in the scenery and the situation as if it were champagne.
Any private citizen could then, if he wanted to, come and settle where he pleased, could fence up all the land he pleased, take everything which he saw in sight, and be a king, providing some wild beast or wild Indian or wild white man did not seek to kill him, which they probably would in short order. But these hostile forces were nowhere to be seen. I asked General Mitchell what he would give for ten miles square amid that beautiful scenery, and he said: 'All I could do would be to look at it. I have now looked at it. I would not give a dollar for a hundred square miles of it. It is of no use to anybody but animals and Indians, and no white man can live here unless he becomes both an animal and an Indian.' There was no help from concurring in his views as we looked over the scenery. It was good for nothing but to look at. None of us ever dreamed that it could ever be cultivated or settled up, or become the home of white people, and made up into townships and counties and organized society. The very idea would have seemed preposterous. We were from humid lands, and here everything was a beautiful desert. Near Ficklin was a large cold spring. There were occasional cold springs in the country, but to us they were only phenomena. They prophesied nothing of the hereafter.
A short distance up from Court House Rock along the river stood a round-top butte which was called 'Rankin's Dome Rock.' It is about the same size of Court House Rock, which is about four hundred feet above the river. Shortly back of the Dome Rock come the outlines of the bluffs through which the river runs. Both Court House Rock and the Dome Rock are in slight bends of the river. Eight miles east of Chimney Rock is the junction where the old California Crossing road through Ash Hollow comes up the Platte. This was the route of travel until Jules, as stated, wanted to start a new and profitable ranch at
Julesburg, and being an old mountaineer laid out the Pole Creek road and cut-off, taking the road past his ranch and within two miles of Court House Rock.
It is eight miles from Court House Rock easterly to Mud Springs. Half-way between is Punkin Creek, a prong of Lawrence Fork, which was dry where we crossed it, but it had plenty of water higher up, also some splendid grazing bottom-land where large herds of deer, elk and antelope could always be found. Mud Springs was a splendid watering-place, but without good grazing near it. Here was where another telegraph station had been planted. Lieutenant Ellsworth of Co. H of Eleventh Ohio, above referred to, had been made superintendent of telegraph lines, and he came down with us to this point. He was the one who told us that Captain Shuman posted pickets on Scott's Bluffs, and kept a picket stationed there always alert, and from that picket station on Scott's Bluffs, Laramie Peak, over one hundred and twenty miles distant in the west, could be plainly seen.
The table of distances which Elston gave, at that time, was as follows: Fort Laramie to Horse Creek, forty-two miles; Laramie to Scott's Bluffs, fifty-eight miles; Scott's Bluffs to Ficklin, nine miles; Scott's Bluffs to Chimney Rock, twenty miles; Scott's Bluffs to Court House Rock, thirty-eight miles; Scott's Bluffs to Mud Springs, forty-six miles. Lieutenant Ellsworth gave the telegraph distances, that is by the wire, as follows: Laramie to Ficklin, sixty-five miles; Ficklin to Mud Springs, forty miles, making a distance of one hundred and five miles, while by the road given by Elston it was one hundred and four miles. These distances were the approximations of various methods of measurement. Elston said that the difference arose in this way; that from Laramie to Ficklin the telegraph line was a little shorter than the highway, but that from Ficklin to Mud Springs it was longer.
At Mud Springs we reported by wire to Major Wood. On this day we marched from three miles east of Ficklin to Mud Springs, being thirty-seven miles. On September 3, 1864, we started early in the morning, and ascended the Bluffs to make the trip across to Pole Creek over 'Jules Stretch.' The sight northwest was as beautiful as ever. Court House Rock, over twenty-six miles distant, seemed close at hand, and Scott's Bluffs, over forty-six miles distant, were plainly in view. We had watered our horses all they would drink, before we started across. When we reached Pole Creek our horses were very thirsty; the men were not so much so, because they had filled their canteens, and most of the soldiers on the road poured water from their canteens into their hats and gave the horses drink, dividing water with them.
The horses would drink every drop of water out of the bottom of the hat, and then lick the inside of the hat. We reached Pole Creek, and that night camped seven miles below the crossing, which made twenty-eight miles from Julesburg. Antelope were seen by thousands upon thousands in the Lodgepole valley. The plains were literally alive with them. Upon the evening of September 4th we arrived at Julesburg. On the whole trip from Laramie to Julesburg we had not seen a single Indian. Our guide, Elston, and I myself with my field-glass, kept a constant lookout. We saw two or three smoke signals on each side of the Platte, but coming down Lodgepole there was never a signal of any kind; and at night no fire-arrows went up, – so we came to the conclusion that the Cheyennes were all far south, and the Sioux had all gone far to the north. Yet, nevertheless, we never met a traveler nor a team nor a train on the entire march from Laramie down to Julesburg, a distance of 175 miles, which we made in five days, averaging 35 miles per day. The country was absolutely deserted by both Indians and white men.
We camped near the river at Julesburg station, and the men put up their 'pup tents,' as they were called, and slept under them. We had no regular tents, but only the little canvas sheet that had been invented during the war, and was called a 'shelter tent.' It was just long enough for a man, and wide enough for two, and stood from eighteen inches to two feet high according to the way the soldier put it up. We stretched our picket-rope between our company wagons, and the boys spread their pup tents wherever they wanted to, without any order or regularity, and, quite tired from the long and rapid ride, they went to sleep and rest. We found quite a collection of people at Julesburg station. They had fortified, and the road was being patrolled by soldiers from both ways. The Colorado soldiers patrolled down to Julesburg and our regiment patrolled from the east up the river that far, and brought through little trains consisting of rapid traveling horses or mule wagons, and stages; but there was no traveling either way on the road, owing to the lateness of the season, by 'bull trains.' It was too late for oxen to come up from the Missouri River, and it was too late for them to have started back, so that the road was practically clear of the usual freighting trains; but horse trains and mule trains going rapidly under escort were passing almost daily to Denver.
While we had been up at Fort Laramie, there had been great inroads made upon the ranches along the line between Kearney and Cottonwood. Many ranchmen and freighters had been killed, several ranches destroyed, many horses and cattle run off, and a great deal of destruction done in the Platte valley, but it was all east of us, none of it along the line where we then were, but everybody was prepared to resist Indians. Nobody was particularly afraid of them when in a ranch or doby house, or wherever gathered together in squads of armed men. But, nevertheless, there were no white men going out to trade with the Indians, nor were they hunting out in the hills or trapping along the rivers and streams. On the contrary, they were all bunched together in little nuclei along the river, and
