THE PRAIRIE. 



135 



the boundless plain suddenly flashes with rose-coloured 

 light, as the first rays of the sun sparkle in the dew on 

 the long rich grass, gently stirred by the unfailing morn- 

 ing breeze. It must be seen at noon-day, when refraction 

 swells into the forms of distant hill ranges the ancient 

 beaches and ridges of Lake Winnipeg, which mark its 

 former extension ; when each willow bush is magnified 

 into a grove, each distant clump of aspens, not seen 

 before, into wide forests, and the outline of wooded river 

 banks, far beyond unassisted vision, rise into view. It 

 must be seen at sunset, when, just as the huge ball of 

 fire is dipping below the horizon, he throws a flood of 

 red light, indescribably magnificent, upon the illimitable 

 waving green, the colours blending and separating with 

 the gentle roll of the long grass in the evening breeze, 

 and seemingly magnified towards the horizon into the 

 distant heaving swell of a parti-coloured sea. It must be 

 seen, too, by moonlight, when the summits of the low 

 green grass waves are tipped with silver, and the stars in 

 the west disappear suddenly as they touch the earth. 

 Finally, it must be seen at night, when the distant 

 prairies are in a blaze, thirty, fifty, or seventy miles 

 away ; when the fire reaches clumps of aspen, and the 

 forked tips of the flames, magnified by refraction, flash 

 and quiver in the horizon, and the reflected hghts from 

 rolling clouds of smoke above tell of the havoc which is 

 raging below. 



These are some of the scenes which must be witnessed 

 and felt before the mind forms a true conception of the 

 Eed Eiver prairies in that unrelieved immensity which 

 belongs to them in common with the ocean, but which, 

 unlike the ever-changing and unstable sea, seem to promise 

 a bountiful recompence to millions of our fellow-men. 



On the 10th September I started for Prairie Portage, 



K 4 



