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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1879)
no HKKI.KCTIONS. VOIi. VIII, WfT "i . ItEFLEOTIONS. On llic south suit! of the Hivor Platte is :i hold blulV which overlooks nil tho neighboring prominences. It is said to have boon much frequented hy t lie Tir diiuis as a place of observation, and at the summit u daughter of .lutan, iv once noted chief, is said to have been buried. Hut whether it was this eminence or one far distant is uncertain. The view from the top, on a clear day in summer, is beautiful, and it almost causes the beholder to forget that the scenery of our .state is in general monotonous. A3 he looks toward the north, he sees below him that truly magnilicent, yet useless river, the Platte, pursuing its tortuous course toward the Missouri. The chan nel is dotted with frequent islands, dense ly woodod, and these stand out in bold relief against the barren sand bars. Closely bordering either side of the stream is a chain or Muffs which trend in each direction as far as the eye can reach. The rounded knolls are sparsely dotted with scrubby oak trees, reminding one of a neglected apple orchard in the older states. The deep ravines that inter sect the blufl'i are marked by lines of brush-wood, and on the declivities one may often see a projecting ledge of rock. As one looks away from the river, the prominences are seen to be less sharply defined, and they fade away into that gently undulating sea of prairie which is o characteristic of the Great We&l. One may gaze for a long distance up the river and see the bluffs begin to iceede from the stream, and at length fade away in the mellow haze of the western sk. The river is useless because no steam boat is seen on its shallow waters. The rugged bluff's have repelled the settler to more favored localities, and since the liver scenery has boen little marred by his labors, it well befits the solitude of the stream itself. A rich train of thought is suggested to the one who would take a retrospect! v.; look as lie gazes upon the yet almost pri meval landscape before him. What would be revealed if Time, to whom centuries are but days, would choose to disclose the history which these hills have witnessed t Twenty years ago, those distant prairies were unbroken hy the fields which now so thickly dot them. Here and there, along the river and ts tributaries, might have been seen the log cabins of the pio necrs and their irregularly shaped Holds. Another step backward in the past, and the settler had not yet appeared, though the Mormons had begun to migrate to their distant home in the vast, and then almost unknown, region of the Rocky Mountains. Their long caravans empha sized the resemblance which tho western half of our country bears to the Orient. As if to make the analogy more complete, hands of Indians, similes of the nomadic Bedouins, sometimes appeared, either to waylay some caravan, attack a hostile tribe, or to hunt the buffalo and the ante lope. We look a little further into tho past. The pale face had not yet appeared to dispute possession with the Indian, but otherwise the picture is quite unchanged. Our retrospect lias even yet extended but a short distance back. We might almost limit it to the opening of the present cen tury. We arn not yet satisfied; in fact, our curiosity is bit' just aroused. Ques tions like these suggest themselves: how long lias the Indian occupied this land? has his condition never been higher than that in which he was found by the white man? was this vast region a solitude be fore the Christian Era, when the Mediter ranean lauds were as populous as now? Wo may propose other questions, but a satisfactory solution of them is not al ways possible. However, it seems unnat ural to suppose that the New World, as we call it, haa not been peopled for a long time. Whether our race is indigenous to the Western Continent, as some main tain, whether it originated from the ouc