192 A Walk from 



level, with lines and angles as straight and sharp as 

 those of a brick. You will meet scores of persons in 

 England who speak admiringly of the great prairies of 

 our Western States but I never saw one in Illinois as 

 extensive as the vast level expanse you may see in 

 Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. In fact, the space 

 of a large county has been fished up out of a shallow 

 sea of salt water by human labor and capital. I will 

 not dwell here upon the expense, process, and result of 

 this gigantic operation. It would require a whole 

 chapter to convey an approximate idea of the character 

 and dimensions of the enterprise. The feat of Cyrus 

 in turning the current of the Euphrates was the mere 

 making of a short mill-race compared with the labor of 

 lifting up these millions of acres bodily out of the flood 

 that had covered and held them in quiescent solution 

 since the world began. 



This Great Prairie of England, generally called here 

 the Fens, or Fenland, would be an interesting and 

 instructive section for the agriculturists of our Western 

 States to visit. They would see how such a region can 

 be made quite picturesque, as well as luxuriantly pro- 

 ductive. Let them look off upon the green sea from 

 one of the upland waves, and it will be instructive to 

 them to see and know, that all the hedge-trees, groves, 

 and copses that intersect and internect the vast expanse 



