(One wants
new words in writing about these plains, and all the inland American
West--the terms, _far, large, vast_, &c., are insufficient.)
A SILENT LITTLE FOLLOWER-THE COREOPSIS
Here I must say a word about a little follower, present even now
before my eyes. I have been accompanied on my whole journey from
Barnegat to Pike's peak by a pleasant floricultural friend, or rather
millions of friends--nothing more or less than a hardy little yellow
five-petal'd September and October wild-flower, growing I think
everywhere in the middle and northern United States. I had seen it on
the Hudson and over Long Island, and along the banks of the Delaware
and through New Jersey, (as years ago up the Connecticut, and one
fall by Lake Champlain.) This trip it follow'd me regularly, with its
slender stem and eyes of gold, from Cape May to the Kaw valley, and
so through the canons and to these plains. In Missouri I saw immense
fields all bright with it. Toward western Illinois I woke up one
morning in the sleeper and the first thing when I drew the curtain of
my berth and look'd out was its pretty countenance and bending neck.
_Sept. 25th_.--Early morning--still going east after we leave
Sterling, Kansas, where I stopp'd a day and night. The sun up about
half an hour; nothing can be fresher or more beautiful than this time,
this region. I see quite a field of my yellow flower in full bloom. At
intervals dots of nice two-story houses, as we ride swiftly by. Over
the immense area, flat as a floor, visible for twenty miles in
every direction in the clear air, a prevalence of autumn-drab and
reddish-tawny herbage--sparse stacks of hay and enclosures, breaking
the landscape--as we rumble by, flocks of prairie-hens starting up.
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