244 



NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 



Lower down than the table-land comes th 

 American "prairie." It is not so abrupt in 

 form as the table-land, but was once very like 

 it in the feeling of wildness which it fostered. 

 The name was originally given by the French 

 voyageurs to the flat plains of Illinois and 

 Indiana ; but it has been applied of late years 

 chiefly to the long rolls of land that stretch 

 across Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. 

 Their forms have been likened to the great 

 swells of a tropical sea. The land rises in crests 

 called " divides," and sinks into hollows called 

 " swales." The grass once grew rank and tall 

 on these prairies, bending and rolling in the 

 wind, but from their earliest discovery trees 

 have been known upon them only in isolated 

 spots along river bottoms. The absence of 

 trees on these fertile lands has never been satis- 

 factorily explained. They grow there readily 

 enough to-day when planted by man, but for 

 centuries nature planted and grew nothing but 

 grass. It is said that the burning of the grass 

 by the Indians, to drive game, destroyed the 

 timber-growth, but the explanation is of doubt- 

 ful value. The great conflagration of the plains 

 that the Indian novelist has told us about, is at 

 best a lively piece of the imagination. In cer- 



