CHAPTER II. 



THE PRAIRIES AND FORESTS OF NORTH AMERICA. 

 THE PRAIRIES. 



|ORTH AMERICA, between the Rocky and 

 Alleghany Mountains, and from the shores of 

 the Arctic Ocean on the north to those of the 

 Mexican Sea on the south, may be described 

 as consisting of one immense plain, broken up by the 

 valleys or basins of the Mississippi and Missouri, the Red 

 River, the Columbia, the St. Lawrence, and the Mackenzie 

 rivers. Its total area is nearly 8,300,000 square miles ; its 

 length, fully 3000 miles. 



The most characteristic feature of this region is its 

 Prairies. 



Miles upon miles of rolling meadow-land ; sometimes as 

 level as the fenny pastures of Lincolnshire; always as 

 boundless, apparently, as the sea, richly clothed with long 

 thick grass of a tender green, and lighted up by flowers of 

 the liliaceous kind, which scent the air with perfume, — 

 such are the prairies. Here and there, in the north, the 

 monotony is relieved by clumps of oak and black walnut ; 

 or, in the south, by groups of tulip, cotton, and magnolia 



