We are told by geologists that during the quaternary age of the world, a great ice-berg, moving down from the north, crushed all the trees and vegetation in its path, leveled most of the hills and filled most of the valleys as far south as the Ohio River. When that body of ice melted it formed lakes in the depressions which were not filled with till. Drumlins, eskers and kames, here and there, remain to indicate either the resistance of the prior formation or that quantities of earth filled the uneven under surface of the ice at the time of its dissolution.
By the action of the atmosphere, rains and dew, as centuries rolled on, vegetation sprang up all over that great plain, and springs to supply the greatest necessity of living things, broke forth and flowed in streams that united into rivers as they rolled on to the sea. Along the streams were forests of trees—including many species of the oak, ash, sycamore, elm, sugar maple, locust, hickory, walnut, butternut, linden, cherry, buckeye, blackberry and many other familiar varieties. Also, here and there stood groves that escaped the terrible prairie fires that almost every year swept over that vast plain.
A PRAIRIE FIRE—MC KENNEY.
Game of many kinds, from the monstrous buffalo and timid deer down to the rabbit, the turkey, the prairie chicken, and the quail, was abundant.
Last, and by no means least, was the beautiful flora of that country which was known as “The Paradise of the West.”[1] A traveler who saw it in its natural condition, describes it as follows: “Above all countries, this is the land of flowers. In the season, every prairie is an immense flower garden. In the early stages of spring flowers, the prevalent tint is peach bluish; the next is a deeper red; then succeeds the yellow; and to the latest period of autumn the prairies exhibit a brilliant golden, scarlet and blue carpet, mingled with the green and brown ripened grass.”[2]
“Sweet waves the sea of summer flowers
Around our wayside cot so coy,
Where Eileen sings away the hours
That light my task in Illinois.”—McGee.
[1] 6 Wis. Hist. Col., 421; 10 Wis. Hist. Col., 246-7.
[2] “Western Portraiture,” Colton, 221.