A Trip on the Prairie. 



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 carefully 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 monotony have a strong fascination for him. 

 The landscape seems always the same, and after the 

 traveller 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 different 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 succession 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 death-like and measure- 

 less expanse, and as he journeys over them they will for 

 many miles be lacking in all signs of life. Although he 

 can see so far, yet all objects on the outermost verge of 

 the horizon, even though within the ken of his vision, 

 look unreal and strange; for there is no shade to take 



