Plains

“ I see the glittering tops Of snow-peaked mounts, the wid'ning vale's expanse, Large prairies where free herds of horses prance, Exhaustless wealth of crops, In vast, magnificent extravagance. These grand, exuberant plains, These stately rivers, each with many a mouth, The exquisite beauty of the soft-aired south, The boundless seas of grains, Luxuriant forests' lush and splendid growth. ”

“ Grey rocks and green valleys, roaring torrents and placid lakes, sombre mountains and smiling vineyards, snow-clad peaks and sun-seared plains, glaring light and deep shade alternately come and go with a bewildering rapidity in the one country. ”

“ As we pass from valley to valley, from one range of highlands to another, from broad and heaving plains to plains still broader, from the fresh waters of great rivers and inland seas to the salt waves of the ocean, everywhere, on either hand, the bounties of Providence fill the land; the earth is teeming with the richest of blessings. ”

“ The surrounding plains are endless and verdureless. The scanty grasses were long ago turned into sun-cured hay by the fierce summer heats. There is neither tree nor bush, the sky is grey, the earth buff, the air blae and windy, and clouds of coarse granitic dust sweep across the prairie and smother the settlement. ”

“ Before me were long and wide plains, meadows of grass, smoothly-sloping hills, and a range of mountains beyond, which, parting in one particular spot, formed, as it were, a natural gateway, that might almost lead, in fancy, to some fairy land beyond. ”

“ I like the great plains, the vastness, the mystery, and the wonderful air which must be the purest in the world, that's always blowing over them, but for a real snug, homey feeling give me a little valley in the hills, with a brook of green-white water about six inches deep running down it, and plenty of fine trees--oak, beech, hickory, elm, walnut, and chestnut--growing on the slopes and tops of the hills. ”

“ Beyond the river, the eye wandered over a beautiful champaign country, of flowery plains and sloping uplands, diversified by groves and clumps of trees, and long screens of woodland; the whole wearing the aspect of complete, and even ornamental cultivation, instead of native wildness. ”

“ The high valleys lying between the mountain ranges that extend across it like huge dikes are of surpassing loveliness. Romantic woodlands, dells, lakes, canyons, murmuring brooks, rushing rivers, far vistas, plains, mountains, and hills delight the soul. ”

“ It may enchant the imagination for a moment to look over prairies and plains as far as the eye can reach, still such a view is tedious and monotonous. It can in no wise produce that rapturing delight, that pleasing variety of the sublime and beautiful of landscape scenery which mountains afford. ”

“ In the plains, what with a low power appeared smooth as a water surface becomes, under greater magnification, a rough and furrowed area, here gently undulated and there broken into ridges and declivities, with now and then deep rents or cracks extending for miles and spreading like river-beds into numerous ramifications. ”

“ Here the plains begin—miles of fields of stubble, with here and there a tree and here and there a pool or marsh, as far as eye can reach, an ancient walled city in the near distance being almost the only excrescence. ”

“ The till plains, although sweeping in broad swells of slowly changing altitude, are often level to the eye, and the view across them stretches to the horizon, unless interrupted by groves of trees along the watercourses, or by belts of low morainic hills. ”

“ I allude not to the wood and brake flora of any one country, but to that which finds its home in the vast fields of the whole northern world, and that of the hill–ground that falls in furrowed folds from beneath the hoary heads of all the great mountain chains of the world, whether they rise from hot Indian plains or green European pastures. ”

“ They feel a strong affection for their great, free, untended forests, their swift-rushing rivers, their bright, friendly brooks, their wooded mountain ranges of the East, their snowy peaks and vast plains and many-coloured canyons of the West. ”

“ Though fair to the sight are the Plains of Fál
They are a desert to him who has known the Great Plain.
[Pg 72] Warm, sweet streams across the country,
Choice of mead and wine,
Distinguished beings who know no stain,
Conception without sin, without lust.
We behold everyone on every side,
And none beholds us ”

“ These plains are surrounded with high mountains, continually covered with thick clouds which the sun draws from the lakes that are here, from which the water runs down into the plain, and is there congealed into salt. Nothing can be more curious than to see the channels and aqueducts that nature has formed in this hard rock, so exact and of such admirable contrivance, that they seem to be the work of men. ”

“ West of this singular strip of forest the country assumes the appearance of the "Great Plains,"—that long incline which stretches eastward from the base of the Rocky Mountains. The surface is a monotonous, rolling, treeless expanse. ”

“ From the level of the sea to the summit of the highest mountains pastures are to be found extending for hundreds of miles,—now undulating smoothly and almost imperceptibly, then extending in broad, flat plains, or over a succession of round-backed hills, broken with rocky ranges, and ending in deep gullies. ”

“ The important characteristic of plains is their power to facilitate every phase of historical movement; that of mountains is their power to retard, arrest, or deflect it. Man, as part of the mobile envelope of the earth, like air and water feels always the pull of gravity. ”

“ On very large plains we may travel for days and days together, and see only the blue sky above us and level land all around.
Some large plains are called prairies. They are often covered with long grass and beautiful flowers. Thousands of buffaloes used to live upon them. Many of the prairies are now plowed and used as corn and wheat fields.
A plain lying along the seacoast is called a coastal plain. A high plain is called a plateau. ”

“ We have level plains and rough hills, dense forests and wide stretches of open ground, thickets of thorn-bushes and patches of the softest grass, rough rocks and smooth sand, rivers of varying size and dry channels, where not a drop of water can be seen, and broad areas [Pg 462] which are beautiful plains in the dry season and trackless bogs in the period of heavy rains. Happily for us, the country is so well travelled that its peculiarities are known and the worst places can be avoided. ”

“ In a mountainous country, where the streams, swollen by sudden or heavy rains, sweep down much detritus into the valleys and plains, the great changes of topography thereby produced impress the imagination and dwell in the memory of the inhabitants. ”

“ Large and well-cultivated plains alternate with charming valleys, which are frequently narrow, and so fertile that in some places creeping plants, bushes, and trees, almost entirely conceal the rivulets that wind through them. ”

“ In the distance we saw a large portion of the midland plains as far as Epping Forest and Ben Lomond, a hundred miles away. The whole country is a wilderness of rocks, forests, yellow grassy plains, and water. ”

“ They are scarcely perhaps high enough and important enough even to [146] deserve the name of mountains—these slimly moulded and graceful hills, daintily muffled in luxuriant vegetation—excepting that they are so amply cultivated where the chestnut woods are not, that something of their height is lost, perhaps, because their nature is so like the nature of the plains; the plains, that are no more than narrow little strips of level land from which cultivation creeps up the steep slopes ”

“ Sunday July 20th 1806 We set at sunrise and proceed through the open plain as yesterday up the North side of the river. the plains are more broken than they were yesterday and have become more inferior in point of soil; a great quanty of small gravel is every where distributed over the surface of the earth which renders travling extreemly painfull to our bearfoot horses. ”

“ But though the influence of mountains, hills, ravines, and vales, is obvious even to the superficial enquirer, it should not obscure for us the very real, if less potent influence of lowlands, plains, and deserts. ”

“ Although mountains may guide migrations, the plains are the regions where people dwell in greatest numbers. ”

“ From this we ascended into the purple gloom of great pine forests which clothe the skirts of the mountains up to a height of about 11,000 feet, and from their chill and solitary depths we had glimpses of golden atmosphere and rose-lit summits, not of "the land very far off," but of the land nearer now in all its grandeur, gaining in sublimity by nearness—glimpses, too, through a broken vista of purple gorges, of the illimitable Plains lying idealised in the late sunlight, their baked, brown expanse transfigured into the likeness of a sunset sea rolling infinitely in waves of misty gold. ”

“ There are plains—some of them more than a hundred miles wide—where you can see nothing but white sand, often drifting about on the wind, and here and there thrown into long ridges such as those made by a snowstorm. ”

“ On a nearer approach, however, we could observe numerous patches of cultivated land, and the lower parts of the mountain covered with wood. Farther to the west, the plains are of greater extent, the country well wooded, and in a high state of cultivation ”

“ This theory is well supported by facts, as, unlike the Western prairies, where the grass often attains a height sufficient to conceal a man on horseback, the Plains are covered by a grass which rarely, and only under favorable circumstances, exceeds three inches in height. ”

“ There are numerous valleys, ravines, and canons in the network of mountains covering the interior of the country, but it is only along the courses of the principal rivers that plains of any size are found. ”

“ The generally level surface of prairies and plains is broken in the southern and south-eastern parts of the territory by ranges and groups of hills, which rise from a few hundred to 1500 feet above the surrounding country. ”

“ The Country aboundeth in Wood, fit for all Works and Uses, whereunto the same is commonly put. There are spacious and goodly Plains, and Fields that are divided and interlaced with Brooks, Trenches and Rivers. ”

“ Plains.—Plains are of the highest importance to life and its activities. Not only do they present fewer obstacles to intercommunication than any other topographic features, [Pg 22] but almost always they are deeply covered with the fine rock-waste that forms the chief components of soil. Plains, therefore, contain the elements of nutrition, and are capable of supporting life to a greater extent than either mountains or plateaus. About ninety per cent. of the world's population dwell in the lowland plains. ”

“ Some hills appear on the plains, but after the mountains which we have left behind they are mere mounds. We are over 3000 feet above the sea, and the air is delicious; but we often pass spots covered with a plant which grows in marshy places, and its heavy smell always puts me in mind that at other seasons this may not be so pleasant a residence. ”

“ The plains are more fertile some distance from the river than near its banks, where the surface of the earth is very generally strewed with small pebbles, which appear to be smoothed and worn by the agitation of the waters with which they were, no doubt, once covered. ”

“ —And, O, ye swelling hills, and spacious plains! ”

“ A journey of seventy miles across a series of plains, in a north-west direction, brings the traveller from the banks of the Oom-erbegh to the sea coast at Fidallah; the former part of the plain gravelly; a palmetto desert, but the latter part a fine rich. soil; thinly peopled and little cultivation; but as the spring in this climate draws on, nature teems with life ”

“ It's one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose. ”

“ When they got well up into the mountains they came one day to a place where Nature had seemed to do her best, by way of cañons, storm-scarred peaks, broken and castellated buttes, wild and yawning gorges or chasms ”

“ In valley drift we meet commonly with the bones of quadrupeds which graze on plains bordering rivers. ”

“ I was persuaded now that I was destined to lead a life on the Plains. ”

“ Fertile soil, level plains, easy passage across the mountains, coal, iron, and other metals imbedded in the rocks, and a stimulating climate, all shower their blessings upon man. ”

“ Approaching the Wichita mountains from the north, and after the eye has perhaps been wearied by the tameness and monotony of the unbroken Plains, one is gladdened by the relief which the sight of these picturesque and peculiarly beautiful mountains affords.
Here are to be seen all the varied colors which Bierstadt and Church endeavor to represent in their mountain scenery. A journey across and around them on foot and upon horseback will well repay either the tourist or artist. The air is pure and fragrant, and as exhilarating as the purest of wine ”

“ Great hills rose on every side, folding against each other as if they meant to shut out the rest of the world, with its noise, and trouble, and weariness. So the valley looked, from a distance, like a bird's nest lined with moss, and leaves, and long fine grass ”