I Pass By The Following Day Or Two Of Our Journey, For Nothing
Occurred Worthy Of Record.
Should any one of my readers ever be
impelled to visit the prairies, and should he choose the route of the
Platte (the best, perhaps, that can be adopted), I can assure him
that he need not think to enter at once upon the paradise of his
imagination.
A dreary preliminary, protracted crossing of the
threshold awaits him before he finds himself fairly upon the verge of
the "great American desert," those barren wastes, the haunts of the
buffalo and the Indian, where the very shadow of civilization lies a
hundred leagues behind him. The intervening country, the wide and
fertile belt that extends for several hundred miles beyond the
extreme frontier, will probably answer tolerably well to his
preconceived ideas of the prairie; for this it is from which
picturesque tourists, painters, poets, and novelists, who have seldom
penetrated farther, have derived their conceptions of the whole
region. If he has a painter's eye, he may find his period of
probation not wholly void of interest. The scenery, though tame, is
graceful and pleasing. Here are level plains, too wide for the eye
to measure green undulations, like motionless swells of the ocean;
abundance of streams, followed through all their windings by lines of
woods and scattered groves. But let him be as enthusiastic as he
may, he will find enough to damp his ardor. His wagons will stick in
the mud; his horses will break loose; harness will give way, and
axle-trees prove unsound. His bed will be a soft one, consisting
often of black mud, of the richest consistency. As for food, he must
content himself with biscuit and salt provisions; for strange as it
may seem, this tract of country produces very little game. As he
advances, indeed, he will see, moldering in the grass by his path,
the vast antlers of the elk, and farther on, the whitened skulls of
the buffalo, once swarming over this now deserted region. Perhaps,
like us, he may journey for a fortnight, and see not so much as the
hoof-print of a deer; in the spring, not even a prairie hen is to be
had.
Yet, to compensate him for this unlooked-for deficiency of game, he
will find himself beset with "varmints" innumerable. The wolves will
entertain him with a concerto at night, and skulk around him by day,
just beyond rifle shot; his horse will step into badger-holes; from
every marsh and mud puddle will arise the bellowing, croaking, and
trilling of legions of frogs, infinitely various in color, shape and
dimensions. A profusion of snakes will glide away from under his
horse's feet, or quietly visit him in his tent at night; while the
pertinacious humming of unnumbered mosquitoes will banish sleep from
his eyelids. When thirsty with a long ride in the scorching sun over
some boundless reach of prairie, he comes at length to a pool of
water, and alights to drink, he discovers a troop of young tadpoles
sporting in the bottom of his cup.
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