VALLEYS, PLAINS, AND LOWLANDS 
245 
tain areas there have been fierce blazes with 
high winds; but the hundred-mile sheet of 
flame that travelled faster than a horse could 
run and led up to the dramatic race for life, is 
something that no one—not even Kit Carson 
—ever saw. 
The continuous rise and fall of the prairie 
divides and swales, as one rode over them years 
ago, could hardly be called inspiring. To see 
the sun come up from the grass and go down at 
night into the grass again; to see one’s horse 
walking shoulder-deep in it, and to watch it 
bending before a fast-travelling gust of wind, 
its surface changing in greens and yellows like 
a changeable silk, were novel sights at first ; 
but they finally became a little wearisome. The 
lack of shade, of hills, of valleys, of trees, of 
water, was keenly felt. When chance brought 
one upon a prairie pond fringed with tall rice, 
where wild fowl were flying hither and thither, 
the change was almost like coming upon an oasis 
in the desert. Even the round dry basins of the 
prairie where in the old days the buffalo made 
the night circle against the wolves, or the 
deep trench caused by cloud-bursts, proved of 
exceptional attractiveness after miles of travel 
through that rank-growing grass. 
Prairie 
Sires. 
The roll of 
the prairie. 
