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.
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