CALCAREOUS MANURES— APPENDIX. 261 



Russia and Tartary, form a very large portion of those parts of the globe- 

 All of these, with various grades of fertility, and many points of difference 

 in other respects, agree in being, or having been at some time when in a 

 state of nature, bare of trees, or nearly so, and in being clothed with grass 

 of greater or less luxuriance. 



The word "prairie" was first applied by the French colonists, and means, 

 in their language, a meadoto. The name therefore plainly enough designat- 

 ed all land covered only with grass. The name of " barrens," so strangely 

 applied in Kentucky to very rich lands, of this kind, was oviring to the re- 

 semblance of the dry grass on these lands to the broom grass which covers 

 and grows luxuriantly on the naturally poor soils of lower Virginia, when 

 left out of cultivation. This resemblance caused the surveyors who were 

 sent to lay off the Virginia military lands, to reject these as barren soil, and 

 the term then so erroneously applied to an extensive region, has still con- 

 tinued to be used, and even has been extended to similar lands elsewhere. 



It will be most sure and satisfactory to use the language of the writers 

 who have seen and described these regions, rather than to attempt a more 

 general and condensed description, at the risk of changing the purport of 

 their expressions. None of these writers, nor any that I have been able to 

 consult, give any direct and positive testimony derived from analysis, as to 

 the soil being supplied^ or not, with calcareous ingredients. It is only from 

 incidental observations of the nature of the rocky subsoil, the kinds of grass, 

 &c., that any information of this kind has been indirectly gathered. All that 

 can be said is, that such testimony, so far as it goes, is in favor of the calca- 

 reous composition of such soils generally. ^ Such expressions as most 

 strongly (though indirectly) support my views of the constitution of prairie 

 soils, or show a resemblance of one of these regions to some other better 

 known, will be put in italics. 



The first extracts will be from the Vieivs of Louisiana, by H. M. Breck- 

 enridge, a writer intimately acquainted with the western country, and who 

 describes what he had travelled over and seen. The Louisiana of which 

 this work treats includes not only the state as now bounded, but all the vast 

 region lying west of the Mississippi, formeiiy held under that general name 

 by the French and Spanish governments. 



"This extensive portion of North America, has usually been described 

 from the inconsiderable part which is occupied by the settlements, as though 

 it were confined to the immediate borders of the Mississippi, as Egypt is to 

 those of the Tsile. By some, it is represented in general description as a 

 low, flat region, abounding in swamps and subject to inundation ; which is 

 the same thing as if the Netherlands should furnish a description for all the 

 rest of Europe. Others speak of Louisiana as one vast forest of wilderness : 



" Missouri marches llirough tlie world of woods ;" 



which is far from being the case, for excepting on the banks of this river, 

 and that not more than one-half its course, the country through which it 

 passes is deplorably deficient in woods. If, then, we are to describe Lou- 

 isiana, not from a small district, important because already the seat of 

 population, but from the appearance of the whole, combined in a general 

 view, we should say, that it is an extensive region of open plains and mea- 

 dows, interspersed with hare untillable hills, and with the exception of some 

 fertile tracts in the vicinity of the great rivers by which it is traversed, re- 

 sembling the grassy steppes of Tartary or the Saharas of Africa, but with- 

 out the numerous morasses and dull uniformity of the one, or the dreary 

 sterility of the other. The fertile tracts are chiefly to be found in the 



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