Only the Mediterranean sea has play'd some such part in history,
and all through the past, as the Mississippi is destined to play in
the future. By its demesnes, water'd and welded by its branches, the
Missouri, the Ohio, the Arkansas, the Red, the Yazoo, the St. Francis
and others, it already compacts twenty-five millions of people, not
merely the most peaceful and money-making, but the most restless and
warlike on earth. Its valley, or reach, is rapidly concentrating the
political power of the American Union. One almost thinks it _is_ the
Union--or soon will be. Take it out, with its radiations, and what
would be left? From the car windows through Indiana, Illinois,
Missouri, or stopping some days along the Topeka and Santa Fe road, in
southern Kansas, and indeed wherever I went, hundreds and thousands
of miles through this region, my eyes feasted on primitive and rich
meadows, some of them partially inhabited, but far, immensely far more
untouch'd, unbroken--and much of it more lovely and fertile in its
unplough'd innocence than the fair and valuable fields of New York's,
Pennsylvania's, Maryland's or Virginia's richest farms.
PRAIRIE ANALOGIES--THE TREE QUESTION
The word Prairie is French, and means literally meadow. The cosmical
analogies of our North American plains are the Steppes of Asia, the
Pampas and Llanos of South America, and perhaps the Saharas of Africa.
Some think the plains have been originally lake-beds; others attribute
the absence of forests to the fires that almost annually sweep over
them--(the cause, in vulgar estimation, of Indian summer.
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