264 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



PEAIKIES AND THEIR TEEELESSNESS. 



r |\HE prairies of the Mississippi Valley, especially those 

 -*- lying within the limits of the great State of Illinois, 

 constitute one of the most remarkable features of North 

 American topography. Hundreds of thousands of acres, 

 stretching through all the central and western portions of 

 the state, present a scene of almost unbroken level and tree- 

 lessness. The great prairies are neither a perfect plain, nor 

 in all cases completely undiversified with arboreal vegeta- 

 tion. The surface is generally undulating ; and here and 

 there rise gravelly knolls and ridges on which the timber 

 has obtained a foothold. But these wooded spots are often 

 many miles apart, and scarcely serve to rest the eye, 

 wearied with the monotony of an interminable clearing, 

 fenceless meadows, and unsheltered farm-houses. 



The traveler, leaving Chicago by one of the great south- 

 ern routes — for instance, the Chicago, Alton, and St. Louis 

 Railway — passes out through the muddy and straggling 

 outskirts of the Western metropolis, and, ere he has thought 

 of the great prairies through which he had expected to pass, 

 he finds himself at sea. Looking from his car-window, the 

 country landscape seems at first to be entirely wanting. 

 One feels as if passing over a trellis-bridge three hundred 

 feet above the surrounding region. The customary objects 

 — forests, shade-trees, fences, houses, distant hills — which 

 elsewhere lift themselves to the horizontal plane of the eye, 

 are not here. The traveler must make the second effort, 

 and look down upon the level of the country upon whose 



