IN PRAIRIE-LANDS 



THE glory of the prairies of old, like 

 that of Ichabod, has departed, save 

 that in the far north-west there still 

 remains the wilderness, untrampled by the 

 hoofs of cattle, unscarred by the steel of the 

 ploughshare. In some of the Minnesota and 

 Dakota counties many a mile of virgin prairie 

 lies, with bronzed masses of true prairie-grass 

 waving about the sod, and ironweed and 

 resinweed mingling with its harsh masses. 

 There, in the remote solemnity of the hills, 

 walled in by the bluest of distant horizons, 

 the waste lands dream of the days that were, 

 when all the earth was wilderness and the 

 hand of the white man had not blotted out 

 the vision. On these huge mounds the buf- 

 falo roamed, cropping thick grasses and drink- 

 ing at the streams and pools that were scat- 

 tered among valleys which lay between the 

 slopes. Their numbers ranged into hundreds 

 of thousands, and now all that is left is tra- 

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