character of the landscape, and makes you feel as if you had been there.

"Now great roaring uplands of enormous sweep, now boundless grassy
plains; there is all the grandeur of monotony and yet continual
change. Sometimes the distances are broken by blue buttes, or rugged
bluffs. Over all there is a sparkling atmosphere and never-failing
breeze; the air is bracing even when most hot, the sky is cloudless,
and no rain falls. A solitude which no words can paint, the boundless
prairie swell conveys an idea of vastness which is the overpowering
feature of the Plains.... The impression is not merely one of size.
There is perfect beauty, wondrous fertility, in the lonely steppe; no
patriotism, no love of home, can prevent the traveller wishing here to
end his days.

"To those who love the sea, there is here a double charm. Not only is
the roll of the prairie as grand as that of the Atlantic, but the
crispness of the wind, the absence of trees, the multitude of tiny
blooms upon the sod, all conspire to give a feeling of nearness to the
ocean, the effect of which is that we are always expecting to hail it
from the top of the next hillock....

"The colour of the landscape is, in summer, green and flowers; in
fall-time, yellow and flowers, but flowers ever." [Footnote: _Greater
Britain_, p. 80 (popular edition).]

If the reader will take the trouble to analyze this description, he will
perceive that, although powerful, it is extremely simple and sober. The
traveller does not call in the aid of poetical comparisons (the only
comparison indulged in is the obvious one of the Atlantic), and the effect
of the description on the mind is due to the extreme care with which the