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S. H. TAYLOR

the progress of the science and the advance of each age. It has no spires the shafts rising from its wings being like chimnies but one part is surmounted with a noble dome, and the other has what is more like a great castle rising above the whole mass. The wings are naked, like bare brick walls, but between them the sides seem a little sloping and are grassy, with the summits covered with scattering dwarf cedars, that, at the distance of our trail, look like men, and really appear like guardsmen looking at us as we pass. East and near it is a beautiful tower, apparently as perfect in its form as the hand of man could make it. It rises about 70 feet with a wall leaning slightly in the center, and then goes up at least 60 feet perpendicularly. In the center, and covering about half its sum- mit, rises a noble perfect dome. In the court there is another like this. They are about 160 feet high and 60 feet broad at the base. The main bluff is from 200 to 250 feet high. Court house bluff is probably about the same though some have made it as high as 400, and a book we have here calls it 800. These are mistakes. They are high enough, however, to be worth going far to see, and we have regretted very much that the river cuts off from us the privilege of visiting them.

Yours, &c.,

S. H. TAYLOR.

[Watertown Chronicle, August 10, 1853]

Fort Laramie, July 6, 1853.

Dear Mrs. Hadley Feeling that some of our friends in W. would like to hear from me, I improve a leisure moment in writing you.

You will recollect that we left home with a very sick babe. She began to mend from the first day of starting, and con- tinued to do until she, "with the rest of us," is now in the enjoyment of good health. We have had a fine traveling sea- son, although some mud to wade through ; and although there is a great deal of sameness in the face of the country we have traversed, yet I find it very interesting, and am not yet willing