THE PRAIRIE ON EIRE. 
Some of the central parts of North America are occupied by vast 
plains destitute of water, and almost of all vegetation but grass. They are 
called Prairies from a French word signifying a meadow. The surface 
sometimes swells into a hill called a prairie-bluff, but more frequently, 
the horizon everywhere presents a perfectly straight line, and nothing is 
seen to rise above it. " The traveller," says Catlin, " feels weak and 
overcome when night falls ; and he stretches his exhausted limbs appa- 
rently on the same spot where he slept the night before, with the same 
prospect before and behind him, the same canopy over his head, and the 
same cheerless sea of green to start upon in the morning." 
This vast crop of grass having ripened its seed, dies, and is converted 
by the heat of the sun and the wind into a dry and inflammable mass. 
In Autumn or early in the Spring it frequently catches fire, and the pro- 
gress of the flames is not arrested, except by a river or by heavy rain, 
The Prairie is sometimes set on fire accidentally by white men or by In- 
dians ; at other times it is done purposely in order to get a fresh crop of 
grass for their horses, and also to enable them in the following Spring to 
travel with greater ease by getting rid of the old grass, which entangles 
the feet of men and horses. The fire is comparatively harmless while it 
creeps along the elevated lands and prairie-bluffs, where the grass is short 
and thin. The feeble flame creeps slowly along, and both men and ani- 
mals can easily leap over it and escape injury. At night it presents a 
beautiful appearance, the bluff itself being lost to view, and the chains 
of liquid fire, as it would seem, hanging in brilliant and sparkling fes- 
toons from the sky. 
But in meadows where the grass is seven or eight feet high, a fire is 
a sublime and terrific spectacle. The vast body of flame urged by a 
strong wind travels at a fearful rate, and often destroys parties of Indians 
who are overtaken by it : not that the fire travels as quickly as a horse 
at full speed, but that the high grass is filled with wild pea-vines, and 
other impediments, which often compel the rider to follow the zig-zag 
track of the deer and the buffalo. This retards his progress, and he is soon 
overtaken by dense clouds of smoke, which terrify and bewilder the 
horse, so that he refuses to proceed. The suffocating smell of burning 
vegetable matter, the roar of the flames resembling that of a cataract, 
and the red glare of light, as from some vast furnace, complete the awful 
character of the Prairie-fire. 
All animals flee before this fiery tempest. The screaming eagle, the 
swift-winged beetle, and heath-hen, the antelope, and the long-legged 
hare all contend with the horse and his rider, in the endeavour to gain 
some distant prairie-bluff, a small island rising above a sea of fire, where 
they can rest until the danger is over. 
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