Then as to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling,)
while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara falls, the
upper Yellowstone and the like, afford the greatest natural shows, I
am not so sure but the Prairies and the Plains, while less stunning at
first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all
the rest, and make North America's characteristic landscape.
Indeed through the whole of this journey, with all its shows and
varieties, what most impress'd me, and will longest remain with me,
are these same prairies. Day after day, and night after night, to my
eyes, to all my senses--the esthetic one most of all--they silently
and broadly unfolded. Even their simplest statistics are sublime.
EARTH'S MOST IMPORTANT STREAM
The valley of the Mississippi river and its tributaries, (this stream
and its adjuncts involve a big part of the question,) comprehends more
than twelve hundred thousand square miles, the greater part prairies.
It is by far the most important stream on the globe, and would seem
to have been marked out by design, slow-flowing from north to south,
through a dozen climates, all fitted for man's healthy occupancy,
its outlet unfrozen all the year, and its line forming a safe, cheap
continental avenue for commerce and passage from the north temperate
to the torrid zone. Not even the mighty Amazon (though larger in
volume) on its line of east and west--not the Nile in Africa, nor the
Danube in Europe, nor the three great rivers of China, compare with
it.
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