THE EARTIL FRAME 
201 
cohesiveness and its solidity. Buta few years 
ago one could ride over the prairies of North- 
west America—could ride for weeks up and over 
the rolling divides, through the tall grass where 
the horse’s hoofs made scarcely a sound, where 
there was no tree nor lake nor river nor any 
trace of human habitation. There seemed no 
end to the vast stretch of grass and sky. How 
very impressive it all seemed! How calm and 
serene the great motionless swells of the prai- 
rie! Rolled in their wave-forms, they had not 
moved nor changed. They were probably cast 
in those forms ages before the Indian and the 
buffalocame. The tall grass wove a protecting 
mesh over them so that wind and rain should 
not shift them. They lay silent and immovable 
for so many centuries. But the plough is now 
ribbing their hollows and breaking their backs. 
They will wash into lakes and rivers and flatten 
down into plains, now that the white man and 
his civilization have come. 
But a few years ago one could hunt the deer, 
the bear, and the moose in the great forests of 
Minnesota and Wisconsin—could hunt and walk 
for days and weeks without coming to the end 
of those ‘‘ Big Woods,” us they used to be called. 
The great pines, oaks, sycamores, and elms, 
Perma- 
nence of the 
prairies. 
In the forest 
primeval. 
