4 JOHN BURROUGHS 



we left them behind. A vast treeless country is a strange 

 spectacle to eastern eyes. This absence of trees seems 

 in some way to add to the youthfulness of the landscape; 

 it is like the face of a beardless boy. Trees and forests 

 make the earth look as if it had attained its majority; they 

 give a touch like that of the mane to the lion or the beard 

 to the man. 



In crossing the continent this youthfulness of the land, 

 or even its femininity, is at times a marked feature. The 

 face of the plains in Wyoming suggests our eastern 

 meadows in early spring — the light gray of the stubble, 

 with a tinge of green beneath. All the lines are gentle, 

 all the tints are soft. The land looks as if it must have 

 fattened innumerable herds. Probably the myriads of 

 buffaloes grazing here for centuries have left their mark 

 upon it. The hills are almost as plump and muttony in 

 places as the South Downs of England. 



I recall a fine spectacle on the Laramie plains: a vast 

 green area, miles and miles in extent, dotted with thou- 

 sands of cattle, one of the finest rural pictures I ever saw. 

 It looked like an olive green velvet carpet, so soft and 

 pleasing was it to the eye, and the cattle were disposed 

 singly or in groups as an artist would have placed them. 

 Rising up behind it and finishing the picture was a jagged 

 line of snow-covered mountains. Presently the sagebrush 

 takes the place of grass and another change occurs; still 

 the lines of the landscape are flowing and the tints soft. 

 The sagebrush is like the sage of the garden become 

 woody and aspiring to be a bush three or four feet high. 

 It is the nearest nature comes to the arboreal beard on 

 these great elevated plains. Shave them away and the 

 earth beneath is as smooth as a boy's cheek. 



Before we get out of Wyoming this youthfulness of 

 nature gives place to mere newness — raw, turbulent, forbid- 

 ding, almost chaotic. The landscape suggests the dumping 



