Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/136



128 JASON LEE

ably Pawnees. We are encamped opposite a large rock which has the appearance at a distance of an old castle. From the looks of it not considering the deception of the level prairie and the size I should think it half a m. distant but Professor Nutall [Nuttall] has been out and says it is at least 5 m. The Thermometer stands at 202 in boiling water.

Thurs. 29 Have seen plenty of buffaloe to-day but the hunters did not go out having food enough in camp. It is now 12 o'clock and we are preparing dinner nearly opposite what is called the Chimney 1 and about 2 m. distant Lat. 41 51' North.

It was cold this morning so that it produced a hard frost but is very warm now. There is more difference in tempera- ture of day and night here I think than in New England gen- erally. We have made 5^ days march from the ford of the South Branch of the Chimney.

The Chimney is very appropriately named. The appear- ance of it at a distance is similar to that of a chimney where the house has been burnt but on a nearer approach you dis- cover that it is a huge mass of a conical form about half its height and runs up precisely like a chimney to the top [its height] say 150 or 200 feet. Curiosity prompted me to go and examine it but pity to my horse prevented.

Fri. May 30, 1834. This day passed Scott's Bluff which received its [name] from this circumstance

A Mr. Scott superintendent of General Ashley's fur Com- pany, was taken delirious in the Black Hills but at lucid inter- vals expressed a great desire to go home to die and the[y] thought it best to make a boat of skins and send him down the Platte some distance by water where the Com. if they arrived first were to await their arrival. Two men were sent with him but they were upset in rapids and narrowly escaped being drowned and lost their guns and everything but one knife and a horn of powder. The leader of the Com. did not stop for them and it was with the greatest difficulty that the

i Chimney Rock.