sunny afternoon's drive near the blue lake, between the low oakwood and
the narrow beach, stimulated, whether sensuously by the optic nerve,
unused to so much gold and crimson with such tender green, or
symbolically through some meaning dimly seen in the flowers, I enjoyed a
sort of fairyland exultation never felt before, and the first drive amid
the flowers gave me anticipation of the beauty of the prairies.

At first, the prairie seemed to speak of the very desolation of
dullness. After sweeping over the vast monotony of the lakes to come to
this monotony of land, with all around a limitless horizon,--to walk,
and walk, and run, but never climb, oh! it was too dreary for any but a
Hollander to bear. How the eye greeted the approach of a sail, or the
smoke of a steamboat; it seemed that any thing so animated must come
from a better land, where mountains gave religion to the scene.

The only thing I liked at first to do, was to trace with slow and
unexpecting step the narrow margin of the lake. Sometimes a heavy swell
gave it expression; at others, only its varied coloring, which I found
more admirable every day, and which gave it an air of mirage instead of
the vastness of ocean. Then there was a grandeur in the feeling that I
might continue that walk, if I had any seven-leagued mode of conveyance
to save fatigue, for hundreds of miles without an obstacle and without a
change.

But after I had rode out, and seen the flowers and seen the sun set with
that calmness seen only in the prairies, and the cattle winding slowly
home to their homes in the "island groves"--peacefullest of sights--I
began to love because I began to know the scene, and shrank no longer
from "the encircling vastness."