VALLEYS, PLAINS, AND LOWLANDS 



245 



tain areas there have been fierce blazes with 

 high winds ; but the hundred-mile sheet of 

 flame that travelled faster than a horse could 

 run and led up to the dramatic race for life, is 

 something that no one not even Kit Carson 

 ever saw. 



The continuous rise and fall of the prairie 

 divides and swales, as one rode over them years 

 ago, could hardly be called inspiring. To see 

 the sun come up from the grass and go down at 

 night into the grass again ; to see one's horse 

 walking shoulder-deep in it, and to watch it 

 bending before a fast-travelling gust of wind, 

 its surface changing in greens and yellows like 

 a changeable silk, were novel sights at first ; 

 but they finally became a little wearisome. The 

 lack of shade, of hills, of valleys, of trees, of 

 water, was keenly felt. When chance brought 

 one upon a prairie pond fringed with tall rice, 

 where wild fowl were flying hither and thither, 

 the change was almost like coming upon an oasis 

 in the desert. Even the round dry basins of the 

 prairie where in the old days the buffalo made 

 the night circle against the wolves, or the 

 deep trench caused by cloud-bursts, proved of 

 exceptional attractiveness after miles of travel 

 through that rank-growing grass. 



