Ah, what a time that would have been to have lived, and seen old Nature build the heart of the American continent.

A nearly mountain range, "that died a bornin' " ran from Furnas county to Dawes and Sioux counties. Nearly volcanoes sprung the earth in a dozen counties of Nebraska. The Goshen Holes, east as far as Broadwater, Nebraska, swelled like a poisoned carcass, and there today are rounded domes and anticlines, of older rocks surrounded by the new, and geology points prophetic fingers to the deformations.

Depositions of the Gering river and the Hartville sea tell vividly the story. Out of the range of mountains in eastern Nebraska, from much of Nebraska's area, the waters cumulated in great, slow-moving streams, that meandered westward until they encountered the lifted ridge of the nearly mountains. One broke these hills somewhere in Sheridan county, and another near Curtis, and they moved westerly with increasing velocity. The finer silts were carried on in the currents and the coarser sands filled the river beds. We have traced the course of the Gering river; we find it between the forks of the Platte, and in the Scotts Bluff- Wildcat mountains. Partly broken and gone, partly eroded away, yet sufficient remains to trace the majestic current, that left coarse grey and brown sandrocks, flecked with rectangular specks of black. The turreted facades in the castellated hills, from Courthouse rock to Eaglenest, are the sands of the Gering river. At Chimney rock the sands of the spire indicate one hundred forty feet of deposited sand.