the anniversary of their separation from Great Britain. 
        We reached this spot on the day that immediately succeeds this
        celebration.  We had in our company a young Englishman,
        as jealous of the honour of his nation as the Americans;
        hence we had a double reason not to cry hurrah, for
        Independence.  Still, on the following day, lest it might be
        said that we passed this lofty monument of the desert with
        indifference, we cut our names on the south side of the rock,
        under initials (I.  H. S.) which we would wish to see engraved
        on every spot.  On account of all these names, and of the
        dates that accompany them, as well as of the hieroglyphics
        of Indian warriors, I have surnamed this rock “The Great
        Record of the Desert.”

As is the case with nearly all of the prominent bluffs, mountains, and isolated peaks in the romantic valley, Independence Rock has its Indian legend.  The story as told by an old warrior is this:—­

A great many years ago, long before any white man had looked upon the valley of the Upper Platte, the chief of the Pawnees, whose big villages extended for some distance along that river, was known as the Crouching Panther.  He was one of the bravest warriors that the famous Pawnee nation had ever produced; large in stature, powerful in his strength, yet as lithe and quick as the animal from which he derived his name.  He was beloved by his tribe, and none of his many warriors could compete with him for an instant in all the manly games which afford the amusements of the savages, nor with him in the chase after the buffalo or the more fleet antelope.  His prowess, too, in battle was far beyond that of any of the great warriors which tradition had handed down; yet he was not envied by any, for he was of a loving and kind disposition.  He was equal in feats of horsemanship to the Comanches, which nation excels in that particular over all other Plains tribes.

In the village there lived a superannuated chief, who possessed a daughter considered the handsomest maiden in all the region which was watered by the great Platte.  She was as graceful as an antelope in all her movements, and, as is usual in the strange nomenclature of the savages who take their cognomens from some characteristic of their nature, she was known as the Antelope, because she more resembled that graceful animal than any other of the young maidens in her tribe.  She would flit from rock to rock, when out gathering berries, or float down the stream in her birch-bark canoe, catching fish for her aged father’s meals.  Crouching Panther had for a long time had his eyes riveted upon the Antelope, and would often lie for hours on some high point of rock watching the youthful girl as she attended to the cares of her lodge.  He never returned from a successful hunt without sending some choice portion of