This word is pronounced by the common people _pa-ra-re_. I was in the
peninsula of Michigan, and had been for a day or two traversing the
most dreary country imaginable, when I saw for the first time a salt
or wet prairie, which is only a swampy meadow, grown up in a rank,
coarse, sedgy grass.
Not long after we began to catch glimpses of the upland prairies.
These are either clear prairies, totally destitute of trees, or oak
openings which consist of clear prairie and scattered trees. A clear
prairie--a broad unvaried expanse--presents rather a monotonous
appearance like the sea, but surely the human eye has never rested on
more lovely landscapes than these oak openings present. They answered
my conceptions of lawns, parks and pleasure grounds in England; they
are the lawns, parks and pleasure grounds of nature, laid out and
planted with an inimitable grace, fresh as creation.
In these charming woodlands are a number of small lakes, the most
picturesque and delightful sheets of water imaginable. The prairies in
the summer are covered with flowers. I am an indifferent botanist, but
in a short walk I gathered twenty four species which I had not seen
before. These flowers and woods and glittering lakes surpass all
former conception of beauty. Each flower, leaf, and blade of grass,
and green twig glistens with pendulous diamonds of dew. The sun pours
his light upon the water and streams through the sloping glades. To a
traveller unaccustomed to such scenes, they are pictures of a mimic
paradise. Sometimes they stretch away far as the eye can reach, soft
as Elysian meadows, then they swell and undulate, voluptuous as the
warm billows of a southern sea.
In these beautiful scenes we saw numerous flocks of wild turkies, and
now and then a prairie hen, or a deer bounding away through flowers.
Here too is found the prairie wolf which some take to be the Asiatic
jackall. It is so small as not to be dangerous alone. It is said
however, that they hunt in packs like hounds, headed by a grey wolf.
Thus they pursue the deer with a cry {355} not unlike that of hounds,
and have been known to rush by a farm-house in hot pursuit. The
officers of the army stationed at the posts on the Prairies amuse
themselves hunting these little wolves which in some parts are very
numerous.