Prairie

“ 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. ”

“ The Prairie is broad, unmolested,
It points to the high and sublime;
[Pg 2] Where only the sky is above you
And only the distance in view,
With no one to jostle or shove you—
It's there a man learns to be true!
Where the breeze whispers over the willows
Or sighs in the dew laden grass,
And the rain clouds, like big, stormy billows,
Besprinkle the land as they pass;
With the smudge-fire alight in the distance,
The wild duck alert on the stream,
Where life is a psalm of existence
And opulence only a dream. ”

“ After a ride of a few miles my path suddenly emerged from the forest upon the edge of a boundless prairie, from whose dark-rolling herbage, here and there along the distant swells, was thrown back the glorious moonlight, as if from the restless, heaving bosom of the deep. An extensive prairie, beneath a full burst of summer moonlight, is, indeed, a magnificent spectacle. One can hardly persuade himself that he is not upon the ocean-shore. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At length we seemed to leave all human habitations behind; and in the majesty of loneliness we were crossing the desert, on a single track, in the midst of the lone prairie lands.
Those beautiful rolling plains—millions of acres, covered with the short, yellow buffalo grass—extend to the horizon in undulating lines, a wide, uninhabited, lifeless, uplifted solitude. The blue of the sky overhead and the dried-up grass are the only blending of colours. Monotonous as they are, there is the greatest fascination about the prairies. ”

“ What a wonderful place for a few miles of prairie; say for every second section of prairie, like the railway lands in the West! Then came the prairies—a hundred treeless miles at a stretch; sky and grass without limit, a horizon broken only by a settler's shack at great intervals, into the farther West where even the settler's shack failed from view, and one was alone with God and the world. Here was a land where the very posts to mark our checker-board survey had to be shipped in from untold distances. ”

“ The natural features of the country combine the beauties of prairie and of mountain scenery. There are valleys so wide that the farther side melts into the horizon, and uplands so vast as to suggest the unbroken prairie. Nearer the mountains the valleys dip deep and ever deeper till they narrow into canyons through which mountain torrents pour their blue-gray waters from glaciers that lie glistening between the white peaks far away. Here are the great ranges on which feed herds of cattle and horses. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every crest and billow of the prairie is bathed in crimson and gold, while the "breaks" and ravines trending southward grow black and forbidding in their contrasted gloom. Far over to the southeast, in dazzling radiance, two lofty peaks, still snow-clad, gleam against the summer sky, and at their feet dark waves of forest-covered foot-hills drink in the last rays of the waning sunshine as though hoarding its treasured warmth against the chill of coming night. ”

“ It is this which forces efficiency or exterminates—on the prairie. Let no woman come to the prairie with dolce far niente dreams of opalescent peaks, of fenceless fields and rides to a horizon that forever recedes, with a wind that sings a jubilate of freedom. ”

“ The scenery could boast of no great beauty except such as lofty trees, the prairie, with its varied tints of green and brown, yellow cornfields, rich meadows in the valleys, and the shining river in the distance, canopied by the blue vault of heaven, could give it. ”

“ The next day brought us to a lovely little spot, a small prairie of perhaps 200 acres, surrounded by low wooded hills, and on one side a lake winding with many an inlet amongst the hills and into the plain, while here and there a tiny promontory, richly clothed with pines and aspens, stretched out into the water. The beauty of the place had struck the rude voyageurs, its only visitors, except the Indians, and they had named it La Belle Prairie. ”

“ We now enter upon the illimitable prairie which lies before us, the fertile prairie, in whose undulating surface the moisture is retained; this waits for cultivation, and will soon be deprived of its flowery attire, and bear plain, but indispensable grain. Those who have not yet seen such a prairie should not imagine it like a cultivated meadow, but rather a heaving sea of tall herbs and plants, decking it with every variety of color. ”

“ Before me, stretching away for about three miles, is an open grassy prairie, one side of which is bounded by the Chilukweyuk river, the other by the Fraser. At the junction of the two streams, at an angle of the prairie, stands an Indian village: the rude-plank sheds and rush-lodges; the white smoke, curling gracefully up through the still atmosphere from many lodge-fires; the dusky forms of the savages, as they loll or stroll in the fitful night, give life and character to a scene indescribably lovely. ”

“ As I rode leisurely along upon the prairie's edge, I passed many noble farms, with their log-cabins couched in a corner beneath the forest; and, verily, would a farmer of Yankee-land "stare and gasp" to behold the prairie cornfield of the Western emigrant; and yet more would he be amazed to witness the rank, rustling luxuriance of the vegetable itself. Descending a swell of the prairie near one of these farms, a buck with his doe leaped out from a thicket beside my path, and away, away bounded the "happy pair" over the grass-tops, free as the wind. ”

“ But a great part is uncultivated prairie-land, grass, with sparse bushes and patches of brushwood and a few rare trees, and continual clumps of large golden daisies. Occasional rough black roads wind through the brush and into the towns, and die into grass tracks along the wire fences. ”

“ In ten minutes’ time, we had passed through the timber islands, and now the prairie—the grand, limitless prairie—stretched bee us, far beyond the reach of vision.
On goes the chase over its grassy level—on till the trees are no longer behind us, and the eye sees nought but the green savannah, and the blue canopy arching over it—on, across the centre of that vast circle which has for its boundary the whole horizon! ”

“ This is the invitation of the prairie to the discouraged and weary ones of the older lands, whose dreams have failed, whose plans have gone wrong, and who are ready to fall out of the race. The blue skies and green slopes beckon to them to come out and begin again. ”

“ But a prairie is not a wood. There a man may journey long, caring for nothing but the prints his moccasin leaves, whereas in these open plains a runner, placed on yonder hill, for instance, could see far on every side of him, like a hovering hawk looking down on his prey. ”

“ Many hundreds of winters ago, when the cottonwoods on the big river were no higher than arrows, and the prairies were crowded with game, the red men who hunted the deer in the forests and the buffalo on the plains all spoke the same language, and the pipe of peace breathed its soothing cloud whenever two parties of hunters met on the boundless prairie. ”

“ I often think the Lord has placed this barren belt of prairie behind the States, to warn men to what their folly may yet bring the land! Ay, weeks, if not months, may you journey in these open fields, in which there is neither dwelling nor habitation for man or beast. Even the savage animals travel miles on miles to seek their dens; and yet the wind seldom blows from the east, but I conceit the sound of axes, and the crash of falling trees, are in my ears. ”

“ Unlike the martial-like wildernesses of the timbered States, except upon rivers and water courses, which are striped and specked with a rather small than sturdy growth of trees, as far as the eye can glance, swell peeps over swell, and prairie lies beyond prairie, till the spectator can almost imagine himself in the midst of an ocean of meadows. ”

“ To the southward on the canvas the prairie grass is broken by the heavy green foliage above a sluggish stream that writhes and twists and turns through the prairie, which rises above the stream and meets another limestone belt upon which the waving ripples of the unmowed grass wash southward to the eye’s reach. ”

“ In a moment the first rays of the sun shone across the land touching into sparkling brilliance the myriads of dewdrops, while a gentle movement ran through all the grasses and the wild flowers as they swayed to the rippling of the gentle morning breeze which pulsed over the prairie at the first touch of the morning gleam. ”

“ Geography is an element of every man's life. The prairies are in the red corpuscles of my blood. Up and down their rippling billows my memory runs. For always I see them,—green and blossom-starred in the Springtime; or drenched with the driving summer deluge that made each draw a brimming torrent; or golden, purple, and silver-rimmed in [Pg xi] the glorious Autumn. I have seen them gray in the twilight, still and tenderly verdant at noonday, and cold and frost-wreathed under the white star-beams. ”

“ The harvest of the first year of our possession had long been passed, and the fading foliage of a few scattered trees was already beginning to exhibit the hues and tints of autumn, when a train of wagons issued from the bed of a dry rivulet, to pursue its course across the undulating surface, of what, in the language of the country of which we write, is called a "rolling prairie." ”

“ Standing on an eminence that overlooks these alternate prairie and timber lands, extending as they do as far as the eye can reach—with here and there a crowning hill ornamented with a pretentious farm house, or some more humble dwelling half hidden from your view by the thick foliage of the trees, with cattle feeding on a thousand hills—all this is very likely to make the beholder imagine himself in some enchanted realm. ”

“ Makes joyous night still brighter than the day!
Upon the plains a thousand towns arise,
And quickly each to be a city tries;
The sound of trade is heard on every hand
And sturdy men rise to possess the land;
Awhile they lingered, thinking it a dream,
But now they flow in a resistless stream
That seems to fill the prairie far and near,
Yet in its vastness soon they disappear.
[Pg 11] Where once the silent red man spurned the ground
A land of peace and plenty now is found,
A land by Nature destined to be great,
Where every man is lord of his estate ”

“ The undulating prairie, waving with flowers, lay spread out before them, more beautiful under nature's bountiful adornings than the most artistic parterre, park or lawn which the hand of man ever reared. ”

“ For many weeks now the family had been traveling over the desolation of the prairies, for days at a time seeing no human creature but one another. For miles all about them lay the prairies, brown, dry, scorched by the hot summer sun, level as a floor, with never a tree, a shrub, a bush, a hill, or a mound to break the dreary monotony of the plains that stretched endlessly away all about them to the very horizon in every direction. ”

“ The prairie in this place was hard and level. A flourishing colony of prairie dogs had burrowed into it in every direction, and the little mounds of fresh earth around their holes were about as numerous as the hills in a cornfield; but not a yelp was to be heard; not the nose of a single citizen was visible; all had retired to the depths of their burrows, and we envied them their dry and comfortable habitations. ”

“ Arising from the bottom of the Big Blue River, the emigrants are again upon the high and undulating prairie. Every variety of scenery is presented to the view, and springs of water, issuing from the cliffy banks of the small branches and ravines, and shaded by groves of trees offer many places for rest and refreshment. ”

“ Just where the rolling prairie was barred by a patch of woods, long, narrow and dark, a hardy pioneer had erected a rough but substantial dwelling, which, with the waving grass of the plains in front and the dark foliage of the adjacent strip of timber land to form a background, looked as pretty and tasteful as a picture. ”

“ These are either clear prairies, totally destitute of trees, or oak openings which consist of clear prairie and scattered trees. A clear prairie—a broad unvaried expanse—presents rather a monotonous appearance like the sea, but surely the human eye has never rested on more lovely landscapes than these oak openings present. ”