connected with our Prairie region. 227 
unable to state. Black walnut, which is considered as an evidence 
of good soil, is very common in all this region. ‘The prairies are 
sometimes perfectly level but generally are rolling, the swells being 
often thirty or forty feet high and an eighth of a mile or more across. 
The prairie is seldom lower than the wood land that surrounds it, 
and the tops of the swells are frequently much higher: the soil in 
the wooded portions is very similar to that of the open prairie. 
Having crossed this region of smaller prairies we come on its 
eastern border to a district entirely different. This is the strip 
of land two or three miles wide which they call ‘the barrens.” 
This consists also of an intermixture of prairie and wood land, but 
the prairies here are quite small, are lower by ten or twenty feet 
than their adjoining wooded borders and are what are termed “ wet 
prairies.” In winter they are usually covered to a depth of from 
one foot to three feet with water and are dry only in midsummer. 
They produce a rank grass that often grows to the height of nine or 
ten feet, and the soil, a black tenacious mud, is of unknown thick- 
ness. In some places they have reached to a depth of fifteen feet 
without penetrating it. These prairies vary in extent from two acres 
to three or four hundred acres; it is not often, however, that they 
attain the latter size, the average being about eighty acres. The 
trees in this district are almost uniformly white oaks: hickory occurs 
sometimes but in most cases of small size. You are, I suppose, 
aware that throughout the woods of the prairie country, there is 
seldom any undergrowth. The oak trees of the “‘ barrens” often at- 
tain a height of forty feet without a branch and are perfectly straight. 
The little prairies are numerous, occupying about half of the land; 
their outline is waving and abounding in every variety of form, one 
prairie often leading by a narrow passage into another: the trees 
are frequently grouped in a manner that art would fail to imitate, 
presenting glades and other openings: being free from underwood 
we can see: among them to a great distance, and the appearance of _ 
this region either in solitude or when the roads winding over it are 
enlivened by passengers, or the deer are seen feeding on its luxuriant 
grass or bounding over its hills, is very beautiful. Ihave not seen 
a gentleman’s park any where in England that I thought could equal 
what nature has here spread out with a lavish hand. I have spoken 
of the soil in these small prairies: that of the wood land which is 
intermixed with them is entirely different. The surface of the 
ground in the wooded portions is also quite unique. It is rolling, 
