216 Hunting Trips on the Prairie 



and then, to ease the muscles of both steed and rider. 

 The sun was well up, and its beams beat fiercely 

 down on our heads from out of the cloudless sky; 

 for at this season, though the nights and the early 

 morning and late evening are cool and pleasant, the 

 hours around noon are very hot. My glass was 

 slung alongside the saddle, and from every one of 

 the scattered hillocks the country was scanned care 

 fully far and near; and the greatest caution was 

 used in riding up over any divide, to be sure that no 

 game on the opposite side was scared by the sudden 

 appearance of my horse or myself. 



Nowhere, not even at sea, does a man feel more 

 lonely than when riding over the far-reaching, 

 seemingly never-ending plains; and after a man 

 has lived a little while on or near them, their very 

 vastness and loneliness and their melancholy monot 

 ony have a strong fascination for him. The land 

 scape seems always the same, and after the trav 

 eler has plodded on for miles and miles he gets to 

 feel as if the distance was indeed boundless. As far 

 as the eye can see there is no break; either the 

 prairie stretches out into perfectly level flats, or else 

 there are gentle, rolling slopes, whose crests mark 

 the divides between the drainage systems of the dif 

 ferent creeks; and when one of these is ascended, 

 immediately another precisely like it takes its place 

 in the distance, and so roll succeeds roll in a suc 

 cession as interminable as that of the waves of the 

 ocean. Nowhere else does one seem so far off from 

 all mankind; the plains stretch out in deathlike and 



