Following it down for a hundred feet or more I encountered a terrace with the usual perpendicular face, but not intersected by the ravine along which I was descending. As the footing seemed to be good further along, I dropped myself over the edge of the terrace and comfortably alighted upon the level gallery that was next beneath. These narrow and level galleries surmounted each of the many upright-faced terraces, the latter varying somewhat in height. This mode of descent seemed fairly easy, and was indeed exhilarating. The process was repeated three or four times as other terraces were encountered, until I found myself upon a level gallery twelve to eighteen feet in width and possibly a hundred feet long.
Walking the length of this gallery back and forth, I found no point where below it there was not a sheer, perpendicular precipice of more than a hundred feet in height. At each of its ends the gallery narrowed to a point against the cliff which extended far down beneath. Nature had here failed to carry out the general architectural plan of the bluff's structure. I felt earnestly that the terraces should have been constructed with more rigid uniformity. The discovery was now made that the branch ravine which my eyes had been following bore off in its upward course round this cliff and was lower than I had supposed.
To return was impossible, for the smooth cliffs down which I had dropped, being absolutely vertical, afforded no better footing than would the side of a perpendicular brick wall. I was on the opposite side of the bluffs from the road which our train had followed, and miles from it. The last glimpse of our wagons showed them moving far away in the distance to the westward. A shot from my revolver would not be heard a tenth of the distance. Even though I should be searched for, it would be practically impossible for friends to follow my tortuous course down those cliffs over which probably no idiot before had dropt himself, and I should not be hunted until missed at night, for we often left the train for long side trips. The bluffs had already been named from one starving unfortunate, but I had no desire to add my own name to its history. As I walked back and forth along that gallery, looking upward and downward for some line of escape, the prospect was not cheerful. I suddenly became both hungry and thirsty.
A long, dry, cedar log lay upon the hard floor of the gallery, and I wearily sat upon it for a brief period of silent meditation. The broad landscape to the south stood out clear and beautiful in the sunlight, and far beneath, at the foot of the cliffs, the dark cedars in the shade were in mild contrast with the dull gray of the steep, clayey cliffs to which they clung on either side; but the landscape seemed at that time to have lost much of its interest, although it produced a lasting impression. The cedar log was a straight, slender, tapering shaft possibly fifty feet in length. It was hardly more than eight inches in diameter at its butt. Being without bark, it had doubtless rested there for many years, and was thoroughly dried out as was nearly everything else in that climate, which was arid the greater part of the year. Taking hold of one end of the log, and without any definite idea why I did it, I was surprised to discover how light it had become through seasoning. Either end of it could be lifted without great effort.
At the western end of the gallery upon which I stood, and far below it, was the ravine, which from that point seemed to be continuous, and made a rapid descent to the foot of the mountain. It was comparatively narrow, and two or three tall cedars on its opposite side sprang out from a little ledge in the cliff. Some limbs in one of the cedars were hardly more than thirty or thirty-five feet distant from the wall of the rock upon which I stood, and on a lower level. A practical thought finally came into my mind. Carefully breaking from the log the stubs of limbs and twigs which remained upon it all of which were found to be very brittle, I planned to slide this log over the edge of the gallery, so that the smaller end, which happened to be in the right direction, would find a lodgement somewhere in the limbs of the live cedars across the ravine, leaving the larger end supported on the gallery, thereby constructing a bridge.
I spent considerable time in calculating this problem, for I certainly believed that my life depended upon the success of the plan. I slowly moved the log along so that it projected beyond the gallery, and then carefully considered the proper direction for pushing it further. Laying aside revolver and field glass, I prepared for the one supreme effort. All the strength at my command was put behind the log as I balanced and then vigorously pushed it onward beyond the brink. Surveying the result, I was gratified after the first effort to discover that it had not fallen into the depths below and that the end had caught upon a small limb, which proved strong enough temporarily to support it. Another push and a careful turn of the log left its end apparently secure near the junction of a small limb and the main trunk of the tree near its top.
The bridge, such as it was, being completed, I again strapped on my revolver, and taking the field glasses, sat astride the log and carefully crept along it to avoid any unnecessary jarring, my only doubt in accomplishing the task being in the strength of the old log and of the small limb which supported it. The distance beneath me had no more terrors than forty feet would naturally have, but when I laid my hands upon the slender trunk of the live cedar I breathed a sigh of relief. "Shinning" down a tree was a simple matter, with which any youth would be familiar. After reaching the base of the tree I found other trees and shrubs that aided in the further descent, although there were a few other terraces or perpendicular cliffs twelve or fifteen feet in height over which I dropped with ease and safety.
This course led me into a ravine, which, like nearly all such erosions in that country, had abrupt sides, averaging thirty or forty feet in depth, which I discovered later led to the Platte River, gradually increasing in width and depth as it descended. Some miles distant it was crossed by a bridge over which the traffic by that trail passed. Following the bottom of this ravine, or dry run, until I reached a point slightly outside the higher walls of the bluffs, I there came upon a huge pile of fossil bones. Skeletons, half exposed, projected from the steep sides of the deep run in great numbers. Many lay strewn upon the bottom of the ravines where they had been left stranded since the last rains in quantities enough to load many wagons. My knowledge of osteology was very limited, but it was sufficiently definite to enable me to determine that none of them were the bones of creatures like any with which I was then acquainted. It was a strange, weird sight.
Being somewhat weary I dropped down in the shady side of the ravine to rest and gazed up and down at the mute records of the past which were scattered around me. It seemed as if the monsters whose bones lay there were suddenly reincarnated. A group of Titanotheria seemed to be assembled in a vast body; the Rhinoceros, Oreodon, and diminutive horse such as lived in those parts, were gathered around, each apparently ready to tell its tale of events which no man ever had heard before. A Titanotherium Robustum, smacking its huge jaws, turned its dull eyes upward to the summit of the great bluff 700 feet above where I was resting, and then turning its gaze toward me, said, "What are you? You are the first specimen of your genus that has ever passed this way. How old are you?" "A score or two of years," I replied. There was a roar of grunts doubtless intended for laughter which echoed up and down the ravine, and the pachyderm looked at the oreodon and smiled. Continuing, the Titanotherium said, "Do you see the top of that lofty bluff?" I nodded yes. "Well, that is young, and it is not more than three or four decillion years since this country was pushed up and has been washing down the river. Before that, it was under water for nearly as long a period, because it was mighty slow work filling in all that 1,500 perpendicular feet of clay out of which all the layers of these bluffs are made."
The Rhinoceros then grunted out his reminiscences, to the effect that all that occurred long after his day, because he was doing business before the beginning of that vast cycle when the country was so deep under water, and before these deposits were made. Continuing, he added, "Away back in those times a very bad spell of wet weather and floods occurred, when we all were caught and stuck in this swamp which finally dried up on all this great crowd of companions of a bygone age. Since we were washed out by the last winter and spring rains which swept down this gully we have seen nothing, and you are the first two-legged creature we ever saw, except a few dinosaurs, and but very few of them lived in these parts."