NOTES FKOM THE PRAIRIE 99 



them ? To see a drove of a hundred or even a 

 hundred and fifty unbroken colts branded and 

 turned out to grow up was a common occur- 

 rence then [in her childhood]. I could go 

 among them, catch them, climb on their backs, 

 and they never offered to hurt me; they seemed 

 to consider it fun. They would come up and 

 touch me with their noses and prance off around 

 and around me; but just let a man come near 

 them, and they were off like the wind." 



All her reminiscences of her early life in 

 Iowa, thirty years ago, are deeply interesting 

 to me. Her parents, a Boston family, moved 

 to that part of the State in advance of the rail- 

 roads, making the journey from the Mississippi 

 in a wagon. "My father had been fortunate 

 enough to find a farm with a frame house upon 

 it (the houses were mostly log ones) built by 

 an Englishman whose homesickness had driven 

 him back to England. It stood upon a slight 

 elevation in the midst of a prairie, though not 

 a very level one. To the east and to the west 

 of us, about four miles away, were the woods 

 along the banks of the streams. It was in the 

 month of June when we came, and the prairie 

 was tinted pink with wild roses. From early 

 spring till late in the fall the ground used to 

 be so covered with some kinds of flowers that 

 it had almost as decided a color as the sky 

 itself, and the air would be fragrant with their 

 perfume. First it is white with ' dog-toes ' 

 [probably an orchid], then a cold blue from 

 being covered with some kind of light blue 



