_ 
Re: 
St” 5 ge Welle on Prairies. es 
aie ame 
leghany county.*) Many of ihose’ prairies are ten of 
twelve a length, and three or four in width. Will it 
_-be-preten that the sides “of those mountains were also 
lakes? Farther—the most extensive prairies known, are the 
yery high plains immediately west of the Rocky, Mountains, 
and éast of the mountains near the sources of the Arkansaw 
and Missouri rivers, extending even on the spurs of those 
© mountains; a country the highest perhaps in North America, 
with a great and continued descent to the Pacific on the one 
side, and to the Gulf of Mexico on the other. “1 : : 
The barrens, also, found in Kentucky, are another e idence 
that water had no agency in their formation—they are sitdated 
it is believed, in the elevated parts of the country exclusively. 
The writer of this, deeming it unnecessary to say more, 9P 
to produce more facts, (although much more may be said, and 
_ many more facts produced) to prove that prairies were not 
lakes, will now endeavor to prove that they were occasioned 
maining on them the whole year; for it is by 0° —. 
necessary that they should be always dry; on the contrary, 
if they are sufficiently level to prevent the rains from running 
off immediately, the grass will grow thicker and higher—but 
they must be sufficiently dry to burn, at least once in two OP 
three years, during the long, dry season, called Indian sw® 
mer. It has been universally remarked, that these season 
are much longer as we proceed westerly—commencing usually 
in October, and continuing a month and a half or two months, 
during which the vegetation is killed by the frosts, and dried 
by the sun; the wet prairies are also dried, and before the 
season has expired, the grass is perfectly combustible. 
pe. blero of these prairies, and of one of the places where they 
are found, being illegible in the MS. we were obliged to omit those names 5 
we believe however that the sense is not injured.—Zditor. re 
