The scene is changed. I am in a plain as before, with the unbroken
horizon circling around me. What do I behold? Flowers? No; there is
not a flower in sight, but one vast expanse of living verdure. From
north to south, from east to west, stretches the prairie meadow, green
as an emerald, and smooth as the surface of a sleeping lake.
The wind is upon its bosom, sweeping the silken blades. They are in
motion; and the verdure is dappled into lighter and darker shades, as
the shadows of summer clouds flitting across the sun.
The eye wanders without resistance. Perchance it encounters the dark
hirsute forms of the buffalo, or traces the tiny outlines of the
antelope. Perchance it follows, in pleased wonder, the far-wild gallop
of a snow-white steed.
This is the "grass prairie," the boundless pasture of the bison.
The scene changes. The earth is no longer level, but treeless and
verdant as ever. Its surface exhibits a succession of parallel
undulations, here and there swelling into smooth round hills. It is
covered with a soft turf of brilliant greenness. These undulations
remind one of the ocean after a mighty storm, when the crisped foam has
died upon the waves, and the big swell comes bowling in. They look as
though they had once been such waves, that by an omnipotent mandate had
been transformed to earth and suddenly stood still.