This Region, Which Resembles
One Of The Immeasurable Steppes Of Asia, Has Not Inaptly Been
Termed "The Great American Desert.
" It spreads forth into
undulating and treeless plains, and desolate sandy wastes
wearisome to the eye from their extent and
Monotony, and which
are supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient floor of
the ocean, countless ages since, when its primeval waves beat
against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains.
It is a land where no man permanently abides; for, in certain
seasons of the year there is no food either for the hunter or his
steed. The herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and
streams are dried up; the buffalo, the elk and the deer have
wandered to distant parts, keeping within the verge of expiring
verdure, and leaving behind them a vast uninhabited solitude,
seamed by ravines, the beds of former torrents, but now serving
only to tantalize and increase the thirst of the traveller.
Occasionally the monotony of this vast wilderness is interrupted
by mountainous belts of sand and limestone, broken into confused
masses; with precipitous cliffs and yawning ravines, looking like
the ruins of a world; or is traversed by lofty and barren ridges
of rock, almost impassable, like those denominated the Black
Hills. Beyond these rise the stern barriers of the Rocky
Mountains, the limits, as it were, of the Atlantic world. The
rugged defiles and deep valleys of this vast chain form
sheltering places for restless and ferocious bands of savages,
many of them the remnants of tribes, once inhabitants of the
prairies, but broken up by war and violence, and who carry into
their mountain haunts the fierce passions and reckless habits of
desperadoes.
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