PRAIRIES OF NORTH AMERICA. 211 



The south basin, of the Missouri-Mississippi, whose mighty waters 

 flow into the Gulf of Mexico. 



It is in the latter that the traveller encounters the great grassy 

 plains of the Prairies or Savannahs which are so remarkable a feature 

 of North America, and which chiefly lie along the western bank of 

 the Mississippi. " There are no prairies," says Sir J. Eichardson, " to 

 the north of Peace River, and the level lands which border the Rocky 

 Mountains do not extend beyond the Great Salt Lake." 



Under so wide a range of latitude the plain necessarily embraces a 

 great variety of soil, climate, and productions ; but being almost in a 

 state of nature, it is characterized in its central and southern parts by 

 interminable grassy savannahs and enormous forests, and in the far 

 north by deserts not less dreary than those of Siberia.* 



Southward, a bare sandy waste, 400 or 500 miles wide, skirts 

 the base of the Rocky Mountains to the forty-first parallel of north 

 latitude. The dry plains of Texas and the upper region of the 

 Arkansas have all the features of Asiatic table-lands ; further to the 

 north, the lifeless, treeless steppes on the high grounds of the far 

 West are burnt up in summer, and frozen in winter by biting blasts 

 from the Rocky Mountains. Towards the Mississippi the soil improves, 

 but its delta is a labyrinth of streams, and lakes, and dense brushwood, 

 and the rank marshes at its mouth cover an area of 35,000 square 

 miles. " There are also," says Mrs. Somerville, " large tracts 01 

 forest and saline ground, especially the Grand Saline between the 

 rivers Arkansas and Neseikelongo, which is often covered two or three 

 inches deep with salt, like a fall of snow. All the cultivation on the 

 right bank of the river is along the Gulf of Mexico and in the adjacent 

 provinces, and is entirely tropical, consisting of sugar-cane, cotton, and 

 indigo. The prairies, so characteristic of Xorth America, then 

 begin." 



And what are these prairies ? 



Leagues upon leagues of rolling meadow-land, sometimes as level as 

 an English pasture, always as boundless, apparently, as the sea; richly 

 * Mrs. Soiucrvillc, " Physical Geography," i. 259, et seg. 



