234 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



from unimportant heights above the level of the sea. Lake Superior is only 600 feet 

 above the level of the ocean, Lake Erie 528 feet, and Lake Ontario 216 feet, while the plains 

 about Cincinnati have scarcely an absolute height of 480 feet, and yet the Ohio is there 

 1400 miles from its confluence with the sea by means of the Mississippi. In this great 

 district a person may have been born, may have lived to old age, and travelled much, 

 without once seeing an elevation worthy of the name of mountain. It extends through 

 all zones of vegetation, having palms and bamboos in its southern portions, while its 

 northern margin, during great part of the year, is covered with snow and ice. Flint, 

 the American geographer, classes under the three distinct aspects of the wooded, the 

 barrens, and the prairie country, the general surface of this territory, the Far West, 

 as it is termed by the inhabitants of the Atlantic portion of the United States. In the 

 timber region the trees are remarkable for the grandeur of their form and size. Fre- 

 quently there are but few low shrubs, and the large tall trees are branchless a consider- 

 able way up, their smooth straight trunks appearing like stately pillars. The rays of 

 the sun playing upon the magnificent upper foliage, and glancing through it, give to the 

 forest the aspect of a cathedral in which the light is modified by the stained windows, 

 and falls in tinted streams upon the Gothic arches and columns. The Barrens, or barren 

 grounds, exhibit an undulating surface covered with long coarse grass, interspersed with 

 copses of hazel and underwood, and a few stunted oaks scattered here and there, which 

 resemble the masts of ships seen at a distance. They are found east and west of the 

 Mississippi, and occupy extensive spaces, but are chiefly situate along the margin of the 

 Alleghany and Rocky Mountains, where they form a series of small plateaus. The 

 remaining, and by far the most extensive division, is that of the prairies, which exhibit 

 no inconsiderable diversity of aspect. These are immense meadows, classed as wet or 

 dry, or heathy, according to their character. The heathy prairies are covered with 

 bushes of hazel and furze, small sassafras shrubs, with grape vines, and an infinite 

 variety of flowers in the summer season. The wet prairies occur by the side of the 

 great watercourses, and are scenes of exhaustless fertility, almost dead levels ; but they 

 are found also apart from the rivers, and form ^insalubrious marshes, like the Dismal 

 Swamp in Virginia, and the great morasses of Florida. The dry prairies constitute 

 the most extensive class, and are for the most part destitute of springs, and of all 

 vegetation but weeds, flowering plants, and grass. They are the plains over which the 

 buffaloes range, without wood or water, on which the traveller may wander for days, 

 beholding the heavens on every side sinking to contact with the grass, and hearing little 

 beyond his own footfall. They have gently undulating and wavy surfaces, which has 

 originated the name of the rolling prairies. " After a toilsome march," says Washington 

 Irving, " of some distance through a country cut up by ravines and brooks, and entangled 

 by thickets, we emerged upon a grand prairie. Here one of the characteristic scenes of 

 the * Far West ' broke upon us. An immense extent of grassy, undulating, or, as it is 

 termed, * rolling ' country, with here and there a clump of trees dimly seen in the distance 

 like a ship at sea, the landscape deriving sublimity from its vastness and simplicity. To 

 the south-west, on the summit of a hill, was a singular crest of broken rocks, resembling 

 a ruined fortress. It reminded me of the ruin of some Moorish castle crowning a height 

 in the midst of a lovely Spanish landscape. The weather was verging into that serene, 

 but somewhat arid season, called the Indian summer. There was a smoky haze in the 

 atmosphere that tempered the brightness of the sunshine into a golden tint, softening the 

 features of the landscape, and giving a vagueness to the outlines of distant objects. 

 This haziness was daily increasing, and was attributed to the burning of distant prairies 

 by the Indian hunting parties." The richer prairies are scenes of astonishing beauty 

 during the months of vegetation, owing to the variety and hues of the flowering plants, 



