WESTERN FERTILITY 



341 



fire in the low-walled, turf-covered ranches, they are perfectly 

 mute: they sit on the benches as still as mummies until they 

 slip down upon the floor and snore until morning. They often 

 camp alone by the roadside. One night I sought directions from 

 one of these solitary men. He was a huge grizzle-bearded fellow, 

 whom I surprised cooking his supper by a little fire in a niche in 

 the rocks near the team. His ugly visage stood out in the blaze 

 of his bacon, which he was toasting on a stick. He gave me suf- 

 ficient answer without looking up to see who was shouting at 

 him out of the darkness." 



On one of his journeys westward, the fertility of the soil (com- 

 pared with the poor relation's share of the earth in the East) 

 seemed to him excessively gross. "The land," he says, "loves 

 the plow, or at least submits to it, as the ox gives himself to the 

 yoke. There is an almost painful monotony in this utter giving 

 up of the earth to the profitable uses of man. The soil grows 

 fatter and more fertile as it goes nearer the centre of the Missis- 

 sippi valley, until, in Illinois, it seems a perfect desert of tall 

 withered corn-stalks and wheat stubble that stretches to the 

 horizon. The towns have a look of squalid plenty. Corn is trod- 

 den under foot, and about the stations its grains often are as 

 thick in the mud as are pebbles in New England. Here and 

 there in wide fields a little rectangular patch of surface shows the 

 roof of the master of a domain big enough for a lord. The sky, 

 too, is prairie-like in its uniformity : it is a vacuous expanse of 

 clearness or cloud without the diversity that a varied surface 

 alone can give it." 



Elsewhere he says: "The moon is full and the mountains 

 show almost as well as by day. Night quiets the winds here and 

 settles the mists and drifting snows, so that for seeing the time 

 is almost as good as day. The walls of the gorge stand as steep 

 as cliffs can, with their fantastic spired battlements a thousand 

 feet above the stream (the river Platte) that winds through the 

 ruins below. All the moods of architecture spires, castle- 

 towers, and city- walls are mimicked in their variations of 



