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.

The sands grow finer from Scotts Bluff mountain as the current slowed down. Then step by step the finer silts appear, and over all the once bottom of the Hartville sea, from Rawhide buttes to Pawnee buttes, the windperforated rocks and soft sandstones are formed in wierd fantastic shapes. They give identity to the hills along the Red Cloud trail, they are as monuments for a long dead sea. The sun shines on the whitened lifted rocks, 'and the pale moon on ghostly forms that rose out of the ancient waters, while places disturbed by the last upheaval, have been worn away by wind, and storm and stream. And glauconite has been wafted from the ancient ocean floor, along with other sand, and it covers the Dawes and Furnas ridge for miles and miles and miles. Hence the Great Sand Hills of Nebraska.

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

OLD TRAILS

There is a woof and warp to every garment. And the garment of frontier history is made over and upon old trails that twist and wind through canyons and woods, over mountains, and in the valley. These trails were old when the trapper came, when the first Latin adventurers penetrated the wilderness, which is now so alive and teeming with inspiration, with human action, and human thrills of ecstacy and tragedy.