The Prairies.
Thus, gradually, we are entering the prairie country, which extends as far west as the Grand Coteau of the Missouri. This prairie region is covered with a rich growth of grass; the soil is extremely fertile, and capable of producing a variety of cereals. Over the greater portion of the prairie country, indeed, forests of aspens would grow, did not annual fires in most parts arrest their progress. Here and there numbers have sprung up. The true prairie region in the United States extends over the eastern part of Ohio, Indiana, the southern portion of Michigan, the southern part of Wisconsin, nearly the whole of the states of Illinois and Iowa, and the northern portion of Missouri, gradually passing—in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska—into that arid and desert region known as The Plains, which lie at the base of the Rocky Mountains.
The Grand Coteau de Missouri forms a natural boundary to these arid plains. This vast table-land rises to the height of from 400 to 800 feet above the Missouri. Vegetation is very scanty; the Indian turnip, however, is common, as is also a species of cactus. No tree or shrub is seen; and only in the bottoms or in marshes is a rank herbage found. Across these desert regions the trails of the emigrant bands passing to the Far West have often been marked: first, in the east, by furniture and goods abandoned; further west, by the waggons and carts of the ill-starred travellers; then by the bones of oxen and horses bleaching on the plain; and, finally, by the graves, and sometimes the unburied bodies, of the emigrants themselves, the survivors having been compelled to push onwards with the remnant of their cattle to a more fertile region, where provender and water could be procured to restore their well-nigh exhausted strength. Oftentimes they have been attacked by bands of mounted Indians, whose war-whoop has startled them from their slumbers at night; and they have been compelled to fight their way onwards, day after day assailed by their savage and persevering foes.
Civilised man is, however, triumphant at last, and the steam-engine, on its iron path, now traverses that wild region from east to west at rapid speed; and the red men, who
claim to be lords of the soil, have been driven back into the more remote wilderness, or compelled to succumb to the superior power of the invader, in many instances being utterly exterminated. Still, north and south of that iron line the country resembles a desert; and the wild Indian roams as of yore, like the Arab of the East—his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him.
Among the dangers to which the traveller across the prairie is exposed, the most fearful is that of fire. The sky is bright overhead; the tall grass, which has already assumed a yellow tinge from the heat of summer, waves round him, affording abundant pasture to his steed. Suddenly his guides rise in their stirrups and look anxiously towards the horizon. He sees, perhaps, a white column of smoke rising in the clear air. It is so far-off that it seems it can but little concern them. The guides, however, think differently, and after a moment’s consultation point eagerly in the direction of some broad river, whose waters flow towards the Mississippi. “Onward! onward!” is the cry. They put spurs to their horses’ flanks, and gallop for their lives. Every instant the column of smoke increases in width, till it extends directly across the horizon. It grows denser and denser. Now above the tall grass flashes of bright light can be seen. The traveller almost fancies he can hear the crackling of the flames as they seize all combustible substances in their course. Now they surround a grove of aspens, and the fierce fire blazes up more brightly than ever towards the sky, over which hangs a dark canopy of smoke. Suddenly a distant tramp of feet is heard. The very ground trembles. A dark mass approaches—a phalanx of horns and streaming manes. It is a herd of buffaloes, turned by the fire purposely ignited by the Indians. The guides urge the travellers to increase their speed; for if overtaken by the maddened animals, they will be struck down and trampled to death. Happily they escape the surging herd which comes sweeping onward—thousands of dark forms pressed together, utterly regardless of the human beings who have so narrowly escaped them. The travellers gallop on till their eyes are gladdened by the
sight of the flowing waters of a river. They rush down the bank. Perchance the stream is too rapid or too deep to be forded. At the water’s edge they at length dismount, when the Indians, drawing forth flint and steel, set fire to the grass on the bank. The smoke well-nigh stifles them, but the flames pass on, clearing an open space; and now, crouching down to the water’s edge, they see the fearful conflagration rapidly approaching. The fire they have created meets the flames which have been raging far and wide across the region. And now the wind carries the smoke in dense masses over their heads; but their lives are saved—and at length they may venture to ride along the banks, over the still smouldering embers, till a ford is reached, and they may cross the river to where the grass still flourishes in rich luxuriance.
While, on one side of the stream, charred trees are seen rising out of the blackened ground, on the other all is green and smiling. These fearful prairie fires, by which thousands of acres of grass and numberless forests have been destroyed, are almost always caused by the thoughtless Indians, either for the sake of turning the herds of buffaloes towards the direction they desire them to take, or else for signals made as a sign to distant allies. Sometimes travellers have carelessly left a camp-fire still burning, when the wind has carried the blazing embers to some portion of the surrounding dry herbage, and a fearful conflagration has been the result.