58 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 



make you see it the Prairie du Coteau du Missouri, ' the 

 hill and lake country of northeastern Dakota and of the 

 British province just to the northward ? The broad prairie, . 

 treeless except along the river courses, which thus outline 

 themselves as in a map, rolls away in low, melting ridges that 

 shut out the sky more than would seem possible to you who 

 imagine that the prairie is as flat as tjie ocean. And so it is 



but sometimes monotonously level like an ocean calm, and 

 sometimes breaking in ripples and swells and ridges of green 

 grass like the green waves of the sea, capped with the white 

 foam of flowers. 



In color it varies according to the latitude, from the gray 

 barrens of Assiniboia, where, the last of June, the whole 

 country is as brown as a mouse's ear, to the lively green of 

 Dakota that at the same season ripples in grass and wheat. 

 Not that our expectations of wheat to the saddlebow and grass 

 above a horse's head are met there. The wheat of Dakota is 

 shorter strawed than the Eastern grain ; it has too much to do 

 in filling its heavy head in the short summer season to grow 

 the long stalks that we find in wheat and grass farther south. 



The abundant wild flowers bloom on a level with the prairie 



little striped pink and white roses scarcely six inches high, 

 but sweet as a June morning, the light blue prairie crocus, the 

 purple wild indigo, and a multitude of showy blossoms, among 

 them that treacherous cactus, the prickly pear, with its 

 yellow flowers. 



An eye that knows the signs will see everywhere on the 

 prairies the buffalo-wallows and buffalo-trails trod out in years 

 past by millions of the great shaggy bison, of whom nothing is 

 now left but these worn paths that led them to water, the 

 saucer-shaped wallows where they rolled in the mud, and their 

 white bones, lying where they fell or gathered into great heaps 



