NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 



But the prairies have undergone great change, 

 like all things American. The settler and the 

 plough have turned under the Indian and the 

 buffalo, the divides are now planted with houses 

 and wire fences, and the wind is blowing over 

 fields of wheat instead of prairie grass. The 

 great charm of the land, its wildness, has passed 

 away. Time was and not more than thirty or 

 forty years ago at that when never a trace of 

 white man's activity was seen on the Dakota 

 uplands; when not a railroad crossed it, and 

 even an Indian trail was almost unknown. The 

 horseman found his way by the run of the 

 divides or the sun, and every adventuresome 

 explorer riding over that tract felt in his heart 

 that he was another Balboa discovering the 

 Pacific of the plains. 



It is not impossible that that wildness may 

 return again, for nature has a way of reassert- 

 ing herself after long bending to the will of man. 



*' They say the lion and the lizard keep 

 The courts where Jamschyd gloried and drank deep ; 

 And Bahrain that great hunter the wild ass 

 Stamps o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep." 



Those who have been plucking the brightest 

 skeins from the fabric of the prairies will pass 



