Under so wide a range of latitude the plain necessarily embraces a great variety of soil, climate, and productions; but being almost in a state of nature, it is characterized in its central and southern parts by interminable grassy savannahs and enormous forests, and in the far north by deserts not less dreary than those of Siberia.[90]
Southward, a bare sandy waste, 400 or 500 miles wide, skirts the base of the Rocky Mountains to the forty-first parallel of north latitude. The dry plains of Texas and the upper region of the Arkansas have all the features of Asiatic table-lands; further to the north, the lifeless, treeless steppes on the high grounds of the far West are burnt up in summer, and frozen in winter by biting blasts from the Rocky Mountains. Towards the Mississippi the soil improves, but its delta is a labyrinth of streams, and lakes, and dense brushwood, and the rank marshes at its mouth cover an area of 35,000 square miles. “There are also,” says Mrs. Somerville, “large tracts or forest and saline ground, especially the Grand Saline between the rivers Arkansas and Neseikelongo, which is often covered two or three inches deep with salt, like a fall of snow. All the cultivation on the right bank of the river is along the Gulf of Mexico and in the adjacent provinces, and is entirely tropical, consisting of sugar-cane, cotton, and indigo. The prairies, so characteristic of North America, then begin.”
And what are these prairies?
Leagues upon leagues of rolling meadow-land, sometimes as level as an English pasture, always as boundless, apparently, as the sea; richly covered with long rank grass of tender green, and lighted up by flowers of the liliaceous kind which scent the air with fragrance. Here and there, in the north, occur clumps of oak and black walnut; in the south, groups of tulip, and cotton, and magnolia trees. Occasionally the monotonous scene is relieved by a lazy brook, whose banks bloom with a brilliant mass of azaleas, kalmias, rhododendrons, and andromedas; the low howl of the cayeute, or prairie dog, breaks the silence; and life is given to the landscape by the frequent appearance of herds of bison, deer, and wild horses. At times, in the remote districts, the prairie wolves will be seen in some leafy covert awaiting the approach of a victim; or flights of birds darken the air, and tempt the traveller with the promise of an abundant provision.
On the right bank of the Missouri, and on the borders of the White River, in the territory of Nebraska, lies a dreary desert valley, some 30 feet deep, which the French expressively designate les Mauvaises-Terres. It may be doubted whether the whole world offers a stranger or a more impressive landscape. Here geology recognizes the vestiges of an astonishing diluvian labour, and it is impossible to venture a step without striking one’s foot against the fossil relics of vanished animals.
It is a kind of world apart, says an American writer; a large valley which seems to have been excavated, in the first place, by an immense vertical out-throw, and then modelled by the prolonged and incessant action of denudating agents. With a mean breadth of 28, and a total length of 90 miles, it develops itself in a westerly direction, at the foot of the sombre mountain-chain known as the Black Hills. On issuing from the immense, uniform, and monotonous prairie, the traveller finds himself suddenly transported, after a descent of 100 to 200 feet, into a depression of the soil where rise a myriad of abrupt rocks, irregular or prismatic, or like columns dressed with enormous pyramids, and from 110 to 220 feet in height.
These natural towers are so multiplied over the surface of this extraordinary region, that the roads wind through them in narrow passages, and the labyrinth may be likened to the irregular streets and narrow alleys of some mediæval European city. Seen from afar, the interminable succession of rocks resembles the massive monuments of antiquity; nor are turrets wanting, nor flying buttresses, nor graceful arches, nor vaulted portals, groups of columns, façades, and taper spires. If at one place the eye lights upon the ruins of a feudal fortress, at another it surveys the graceful ensemble of a Saracenic mosque. Or you might almost say, in the distance, that it is a fantastic “city of the dead” which looms before you; or the gigantic palace of a race of unseen beings, fashioned by the power of spell and enchantment. And if the illusion vanishes when, descending from the heights, you penetrate into the mazes of this Dædalian marvel, the reality is not less calculated to inspire you with astonishment, and the imagination remains confused before this wild, this grand, yet ominous freak of Nature—ominous, for the place seems like a colossal Golgotha, and the rocks may be the monuments consecrated by invisible hands to the things and creatures, the life and majesty, of a forgotten Past!
A spectacle unexpected by the European traveller comes at intervals to heighten and confirm the illusion. Here and there are reared constructions of manifest human work, but of a truly primitive character. They consist of four poles, supporting a rude platform of wicker. Mount any adjacent hillock, and you will see corpses and human skeletons outstretched upon the platform. These constructions are, in truth, the burial-places of the Sioux Indians, who wander still in the neighbouring districts.