As a matter of fact, by far the greatest part of our agricultural land was a forest, but it has been cut down, drained, dug, weeded, hedged, and "huzzed and maazed" with agricultural implements and more or less scientifically selected manures, until it is made to yield good beef, excellent mutton, and almost the largest crops per acre in the world.
Natural grasslands exist, however, in every continent.
The great Steppes of Southern Russia and the pastures that extend far to the eastward even to the very borders of China, the Prairies of North America, the Pampas of Argentina, the great sheep-farms of Australia, and a large proportion of South Africa, consist of wide, treeless, grassy plains, where forests only occur along the banks of rivers, in narrow hill-valleys, or upon mountains of considerable altitude. Upon these great plateaux or undulating hills the rainfall, though it is but small in amount, is equally distributed, so that there is no lengthy and arid dry season. Take the American Prairie, for instance. These valuable lands, once the home of unnumbered bison and hordes of antelopes, lie between the ancient forests of the eastern states and the half-deserts and true salt deserts of the extreme west. Rivers, accompanied in their windings by riverside forests, are found (especially in the east). The real prairie has a blackish, loamy soil, covered sometimes by the rich Buffalo or Mesquite grass, which forms a short, velvety covering, not exactly a turf such as we find in England, but still true grassland. It is only green in early spring.
A Bushman Digging up Elephant's Foot
The Bushman is levering up the root of elephant's foot to get the starchy food inside. He does it by a stick run through a rounded stone. The woman has caught a lizard for the boy to eat.
From the spring onwards until the end of summer there is an endless succession of flowers. The first spring blossoms appear in April; great stretches are covered with Pentstemons, Cypripediums, and many others in May and June; then follow tall, herbaceous Phloxes, Lilies, and Asclepiads, but perhaps the most characteristic flora blossoms still later on, when every one "wants to be in Kansas when the Sunflowers bloom." Over these prairies used to travel the great wagons or "prairie schooners." The cowboy, who almost lives on horseback, watches over great herds of cattle and troops of half-wild horses. Yet his life is, or used to be, almost as free, comfortless, and uncivilized as that of the buffalo-hunting Indian who preceded him. One must not forget to mention the prairie-dog—able to utilize the abundant grass, and diving into a safe refuge underground when threatened by the wolves or other carnivorous creatures, which, of course, multiplied exceedingly, thanks to the jack-hare, antelopes, and bisons.
The Pampas in South America is a similar grassland. On the east it stops at the woodlands along the great Plate River, but on the west it becomes gradually more dry and arid, until long before the Andes are reached it is too dry even to carry sheep, and can only be described as a half-desert.
"It is a boundless sea of grasses fading into the distant horizon, which can only be distinguished when the sun is rising or setting." Yet amongst the grasses are hundreds of flowers, and, a fact which is very remarkable, many of them, such as Fennel, Artichoke, Milk Thistle, Burdock, Rye Grass, etc., are European plants which have dispossessed the natives over miles of country, exactly as the gaucho has driven away or exterminated the Indians who lived there. It is covered by tufts of grass betwixt which appears the rich alluvial earth, yet in good years it may become almost a perfect grass floor. "The colour changes greatly, for in spring when the old grass is burnt off, it is coal-black, which changes to a bright blue-green as soon as the young leaves appear; later on it becomes brownish green, which again changes when the silver-white flowers come out to the appearance of a rolling, waving sea of shining silver."