Prairie Flower

“ These vast prairies, though bearing a luxuriant growth of grass, would impress one with a sense of desolateness, were they not beautified with flowers, and animated with the songs and the sight of the feathered tribes. The view of the prairie, as it stretches off before you, often appears like a perfect flower garden. Though we were too late to see these productions in their rich vernal beauty, yet often they stood strewn around us on every side as far as the eye could reach, spreading out their rich and brilliant petals of every colour and hue. ”

“ Rye, barley, oats, flax, hemp, tobacco, melons, pumpkins, squashes and all garden vegetables flourish remarkably well. Peaches, pears, plums, cherries, &c. grow to great perfection. The land seems well adapted to the use of plaster, and this is found of excellent quality, in inexhaustible quantities, on the banks of the Missouri.
Beyond all countries, this is the land of blossoms. Every prairie is an immense flower garden. In the spring, their prevailing tint is that of the peach blossom—in summer, of a deeper red—then a yellow—and in autumn, a brilliant golden hue. ”

“ We went by little French villages and fields at first, and then through rocky, tangled woods of birch and poplar, rich with milk-weed and blue cornflowers, and the aromatic thimbleberry blossom, and that romantic, light, purple-red flower which is called fireweed, because it is the first vegetation to spring up in the prairie after a fire has passed over, and so might be adopted as the emblematic flower of a sense of humour. ”

“ We have not even the history of Prairie Flower to go upon, setting aside entirely that of the other party, and con sequently must come out exacll} where we started, neither of us the wiser for the dis cussion."
"Nothing more true," answered my friend, musingly. "I would to Heaven I could learn the history of Prairie Flower! Can she be an Indian?" ”

“ I rejoined, "would be worse than vnin; words could not speak it; the heart alone can, and that you cannot see, only through external expressions. Of one thipg, fair being, rest assured : that in the secret chambers of the souls of Francis Leighton and Charles Huntly, is engraved a name that will never be erased that of the noble and generous Prairie Flower." ”

“ It is thus that the tempest, which seems but to destroy the flower, catches up its seeds and scatters them far and near, and these seeds produce other flowers as beautiful as that from which they were torn, so that some fair spot of the prairie, when despoiled of its loveliness, but affords the means of covering the vast expanse with new and variegated beauties. ”

“ One very common flower resembles our cardinal flower, though not of so deep a color, another is very like rocket or phlox, but smaller and of various colors, white, blue and purple. Beautiful white lupines I find too, violets white and purple. The vines and parasites are magnificent. I followed on this road till I came to the prairie which skirts the river, and this, of all the beauties of this region, is the most peculiar and wonderful. ”

“ By the time you see all this the wide spaces are no longer lonely, and the individuals that inhabit them begin to step forward out of the mass and salute you. I always notice first the prairie flowers. Like the trees these are scattered here and there, the conspicuous ones in no wise as plentiful as the daisies and buttercups of Northern meadows. Scattered like big stars at twilight the heliopsis blooms show golden disks of composite flowers, veritable tiny suns in the prairie firmament, while about them revolve constellations of yellow stars of coreopsis. ”

“ With the coming of midsummer, the colors become more brilliant. The fragrant prairie rose, the State flower, blossoms profusely in fields and along roadsides. The showy oxeye or [Pg 14] false-sunflower, the flaming prairie mallow, wild blue and yellow flax, the vivid flame lily, the purple coneflower, and the black-eyed Susan emblazon the summer fields. ”

“ Among these, depending on the soil, are hundreds of prairie flowers which, during different parts of a single season, give quite different aspects to the region. Both the grasses and their associated herbs are well protected against too violent transpiration which their exposure to nearly continuous sunshine, high summer heat, and very considerable winds makes particularly active. In many places where the country is rolling, the lower and moister sites, besides developing more luxuriant growth of prairie plants, permits low shrubs, and in river bottoms even trees to flourish. ”

“ This other alluded to, was the residence of Prai rie Flower, and two young, dark-skinned, blaok - haired, bright - eyed, pretty - faced Indian girls, whose countenances and costumes bespoke intelligence and superiority.
Among this tribe were some twenty fe males and as many children, and the bal ance males, all of whom were decently dad, and clean and tidy in their appear ance. Save Prairie Flower, but very few of them wore any kind of ornaments, and their dark, clear skins were not in the least bedaubed with paint. ”

“ One of the latest of the autumn prairie flowers—and one not found by me until drear November has come in the wake of Indian summer weather—is the ladies-tresses, an orchid of no striking beauty, but, in a region where orchids are rare and arriving after the eleventh hour, it has its full share of interest. The plants are single-stemmed, few-leaved, and the small, pure white flowers are so arranged upon the long spike as to assume a spiral inflorescence, from which fact the common name doubtless originated in the fertile mind of some imaginative lover of plants. ”

“ The food of these interesting little fel lows consists, for the most part, of prairia grass and roots. They live a life of con stant alarm being watched and pounced upon continually by the wolf, the hawk, the eagle, &c. ”

“ COOL and sparkling after its morning rain-bath, and showing along its green ridges those first, faint signs of yellow that foretell a coming ripeness, the grass-mantled prairie lay beneath the warm noon sun. The little girl, cantering over it toward the sod shanty on the farther river bluffs, frightened the trilling meadow-larks, as she passed, from their perch on the dripping sunflowers, and scattered the drops on the wild wheat-blades with the hoofs of her blind black pony. ”

“ On Western prairies blossoms the deep pink prairie rose, the only native climbing rose of the States, and on rocky banks in Pennsylvania woods may be found the beautiful wild hydrangea flowers, silvery white or rose-color. ”

“ Thus three months passed by, and man’s work for the year was nearly done. The face of the prairie had become one of many colors; eternal badge of civilization as opposed to Nature, who paints each season with its own hue. Beside the roadways great, rank sunflowers turned their glaring yellow faces to the light. In every direction stretched broad fields of flax; unequally ripening, their color scheme ranging from sky blue of blossoms to warm browns of maturity. Blotches of sod corn added here and there a dash of green to the picture. ”

“ On the intervals of prairie grow the grasses, soft, brown and ripe with last year’s growth, showing as yet but little of the green of this. These paint all the background of the scene with their olives and tans, as if the painter of it first made his background with grass, then set his figures and lights and shades upon this, the gray stubs, the deep brown trunks of living trees, the vivid green of the palmetto leaves and gold of sunlight and purple of shadows chasing one another over all. ”

“ Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring - that delicious commingling of the perfume of arbutus, the odor of pines, and the snow-soaked soil just warming into life? Those who know the flower only as it is sold in the city streets, tied with wet, dirty string into tight bunches, withered and forlorn, can have little idea of the joy of finding the pink, pearly blossoms freshly opened among the withered leaves of oak and chestnut, moss, and pine needles in which they nestle close to the cold earth in the leafless, windy northern forest. ”

“ One may journey a long way to witness a prettier or more picturesque sight than Round-fish harvesting on the Sumass prairie: the prairie bright and lovely; the grass fresh, green, and waving lazily; various wild flowers, peeping coyly out from their cosy hiding-places, seem making the most of the summer; a fresh, joyous hilarity everywhere, pervading even the Indians, whose lodges in great numbers lie scattered about. From the edges of the pine-forest, where the little streams came out from the dark shadow into the sunshine, up to the lake, the prairie was like a fair. Indians, old and young ”

“ The prairie stretches out broad and green with many circular islets of tree-mounds in the ocean-like expanse. The winding road beyond the ford leads, between cultivated fields on one side and the tree-bordered prairie on the other, up to the low horizon, where soft white thunderheads are heaped in the hazy blue. ”

“ Among them all, however, there are none so large and varied as La Prairie, so called, which stretches from the Mississippi River more than a hundred miles into the interior. Now, it spreads to the horizon’s verge a vast level, carpeted, in the spring-time, with luxuriant verdure, amid which are scattered myriads of beautiful wild flowers—anon, the surface slopes in gentle undulations, rising higher as you proceed, until they become romantic and broken, dividing into hills and ridges, while clear and sparkling rivulets flow down the valleys between. ”

“ And now as the biting winds of winter yield to the balmy breezes from the south all the vernal flora is quickened into life and beauty. The modest blue violets appear in such profuse abundance that they seem like shreds of the sky wafted by the spring breezes over the land and drifted into every swale and ravine. ”

“ In taking a general view of its surface, it seemed to be almost perfectly level. But as we advanced, I perceived that it was undulating, like the ocean thrown into long waves by a gale of wind.
It was now late in the autumn, but the prairie was covered with a great variety of flowers, some of them exceedingly brilliant and beautiful. I hardly noticed these objects then. I was with savages, and they never perceive anything lovely in flowers, or landscapes, or nature’s fairest scenes. It might seem that those who live always in the midst of nature’s works would feel their beauty and admire them. ”

“ The road lay straight across the prairie, green now with the tender green of spring, and dotted thick with blue anemones. A prairie fire, the fall before, had burned away all the old grass, and so everywhere the country was of the richest dazzling green, varied only in the shades—the tender, soft green of the young wheat, the bluish green of the oat-fields, with here and there splendid groves of poplars, making a scene which, to Pearl's eyes, was of untold beauty. ”

“ One who has never looked upon the Western prairie in the pride of its blushing bloom can hardly conceive the surpassing loveliness of its summer flora; and, if the idea is not easy to conceive, still less is it so to convey. The autumn flowers in their richness I have not yet beheld ”

“ For the Virgins the bloom of the prairies wide— The blushing pink and the meek blue-bell, The purple plumes of the prairie's pride, 49 The wild, uncultured asphodel, And the beautiful, blue-eyed violet That the Virgins call "Let-me-not-forget," In gay festoons and garlands twine With the cedar sprigs 50 and the wildwood vine. ”

“ A prairie, when green, does not always glad the eye,—not even when enamelled with fairest flowers. I have crossed such plains, verdant or blooming to the utmost verge of vision, and longed for something to appear in sight—a rock, tree, a living creature—anything to relieve the universal sameness; just as the voyager on the ample ocean longs for ships, for cetaceae, or the sight of land, and is delighted with a nautilus, polypi, phosphorescence, or a floating weed.
Colour alone does not satisfy the sense. What hue more charming than the fresh verdure of the grassy plain? ”

“ The moon was half full, and her beams, scarcely piercing through the deep foliage of the wooded vale, streaked with silver lines its mossy herbage; eastward lay the vast expanse of undulating prairie, on which countless herds of bison lazily cropped the dew–sprinkled grass, while high above the scene towered the gigantic peaks of the Western Andes slumbering in a light as cold and pale as their own eternal snow. ”

“ Most of all we forgot about an alien down in the Hermit's Cave, "a good Indian" turned bad in one brief hour. Dear are the memories of that springtide. Many a glorious April have I seen in this land of sunshine, but none has ever seemed quite like that one to me. Nor waving yellow wheat, nor purple alfalfa bloom, nor ramparts of dark green corn on well-tilled land can hold for me one-half the beauty of the windswept springtime prairie. No sweet odor of new-ploughed ground can rival the fragrance of the wild grasses in their waving seas of verdure. ”

“ THE LAND OF BILLOWING CLOUDS Never a tawny-beached ocean has the sweetness of the prairie slew. Rippling and blue, with long grass up to its edge, a spot of dancing light set in the miles of rustling wheat, it retains even in July, on an afternoon of glare and brazen locusts, the freshness of a spring morning. A thousand slews, a hundred lakes bordered with rippling barley or tinkling bells of the flax, Claire passed. ”