296 BUFFALO LAND. 



tion began crawling up the slope of the Professor's 

 metaphorical roof, and thereupon our worthy leader's 

 discourse was brought to a graceful conclusion. 



For four days we continued our westward journey, 

 the soft grass carpet beneath us ever stretching away 

 to the horizon in its tiresome sameness, its figures of 

 buffalo and antelope, big antlered elk and skulking 

 wolves woven more beautifully upon its brown ground 

 than in the rug-work of the looms. How I loved to 

 sit upon these latter, when a child, and gaze at the 

 strange figures, as they were lit up by the flashing 

 fire-light! Memory recalled one very impracticable 

 reindeer, which used to lie just in front of a maiden 

 aunt's chair, representing a Brussels manufacturer's 

 idea of the animal. His horns were longer than his 

 head, body and tail combined, and the spring he was 

 making, when transfixed by the loom, brought his 

 nose so close to the ground, that my older boyhood 

 calculated the immense antlers w^ould certainly have 

 tipped him over had he not been held back by the 

 threads. 



But to return to the plains. We examined high- 

 lands and lowlands for poor soil, but found none. 

 What we had once expected to see a bed of sand, if 

 ever we saw it at all, turned up under the spade a rich 

 dark loam, in depth and character fully equal to an 

 Illinois prairie. Together with those other legends, 

 localized drought and grasshoppers, the American 

 desert, when revealed by the head-light of civilization, 

 had taken to itself the wings of a myth, and fled 

 away. There was a great sameness in the climate, 

 as well as the scenery. Day followed day, with its 



