OUTDOORS 



aborigine, swept resistlessly over the land. 

 Roads cut their way over the hills, and the 

 white-topped wagons of the early settlers 

 came eagerly in search of the unbroken acres 

 of the north. Log-houses, rude and one- 

 storied, topped the hills in scant force, and 

 from their clay-daubed chimneys the smoke of 

 a white race had followed the dying camp- 

 fires of the red men. Agriculture was level- 

 ling forests, building homes, ripping up the 

 prairies in every direction and driving before 

 it the buffalo, the bear, the wolf, antelope, 

 and beaver. Cattle drank at the streams 

 where the buffalo had wallowed, and the out- 

 lines of the first farms, faint but prophetic, 

 were spread upon the canvas of rolling and 

 lonely prairies. 



The moccasined foot of the Indian turned 

 to the far west, and, except as an occasional 

 wanderer, he was seen no more. The teem- 

 ing life of the billowy plains went with him, 

 and the shriek of the locomotive came to 

 startle the wilds where the war-whoop had 

 sounded. The canvas covers of the " prairie- 

 schooners " faded from the roads, the free 

 acres of primal days were all taken up, and 



234 



