PRAIRIES AND THEIR TREELESSNESS 265 



bosom he has launched. The sensation is that which one 

 experiences in going to sea. The rattling train is easily 

 transformed into the puffing and creaking steam-ship, while 

 the interminable prairie, mingling its distant and softened 

 green with the subdued azure of the summer sky, can be 

 .likened to nothing but the ocean's boundless expanse. The 

 ever-recurring undulation of the prairie is the grand ocean- 

 swell which utters perpetually a reminiscence of the last 

 storm, while the evening sun, with dimmed lustre, settles 

 down into the prairie's green sod, as to the mariner he sinks 

 into the emerald bosom of the sea. 



Illinois has been styled the garden state of the West. 

 The deep, rich, pulverulent soil of the upland prairie, and 

 especially its readiness for the plow, without the interven- 

 tion of a year's hard labor in opening a clearing, have al- 

 ways constituted powerful attractions for the settler from 

 the stony soils of New England, and the wooded regions 

 of the other states. It is extremely doubtful, however, 

 whether the absence of forests over the area of half a state 

 possesses a balance of advantages. Forests possess im- 

 mense utilities in addition to furnishing lumber and fuel. 

 This discovery was long since made in the denuded regions 

 of the older European countries; and Americans are talking 

 at times as if they were growing wiser. Even the cobble- 

 stones of a New England or New York soil are not unmit- 

 igated inconveniences. During the day they absorb the 

 warmth of the sun, and at night they retain it and impart 

 it to the soil. In times of drought they screen the soil 

 from the direct rays of the sun, and thus moderate the in- 

 tensity of the heat. They diminish the evaporating sur- 

 face of the soil, and thus diminish the effects of continued 

 droughts. A loose stone is a shade ; but, unlike a tree, it 

 has no roots of its own to creep about and steal the moist- 

 ure from weaker forms of vegetation. A few stones do not 



M 



