Flagg's The Far West, 1836-1837, part 1

The touching, delicate loveliness of the lesser prairies, so resplendent in brilliancy of hue and beauty of outline, I have often dwelt upon with delight. The graceful undulation of slope and swell; the exquisite richness and freshness of the verdure flashing in native magnificence; the gorgeous dies of the matchless and many-coloured flowers dallying with the winds; the beautiful woodland points and promontories shooting forth into the mimic sea; the far-retreating, shadowy coves, going back in long vistas into the green wood; the curved outline of the dim, distant horizon, caught at intervals through the openings of the forest; and the whole gloriously lighted up by the early radiance of morning, as with rosy footsteps she came dancing over the dew-gemmed landscape; all these constituted a scene in which beauty unrivalled was the sole ingredient. And then those bright enamelled clumps of living emerald, sleeping upon the wavy surface like the golden Hesperides of classic fiction, or, like another cluster of Fortunate Isles in the dark-blue waters, breathing a fragrance as from oriental bowers; the wild-deer bounding in startled beauty from his bed, and the merry note of the skylark, whistling, with speckled vest and dew-wet wing, upon the resin-weed, lent the last touchings to Nature's chef d'œuvre.

"Oh, beautiful, still beautiful,Though long and lone the way."

But the scene amid which I was now standing could boast an aspect little like this. Here, indeed, were the rare and delicate flowers; and life, in all its fresh and beautiful forms, was leaping forth in wild and sportive luxuriance at my feet. But all was vast, measureless, Titanic; and the loveliness of the picture was lost in its grandeur. Here was no magnificence of beauty, no gorgeousness of vegetation, no splendour of the wilderness;

"Green isles and circling shores ne'er blended hereIn wild reality!"

All was bold and impressive, reposing in the stern, majestic solitude of Nature. On every side the earth heaved and rolled like the swell of troubled waters; now sweeping away in the long heavy wave of ocean, and now rocking and curling like the abrupt, broken bay-billow tumbling around the crag. Between the lengthened parallel ridges stretch the ravines by which the prairie is drained; and, owing to the depth and tenacity of the soil, they are sometimes almost impassable. Ascending from these, the elevation swells so gradually as to be almost imperceptible to the traveller, until he finds himself upon the summit, and the immense landscape is spread out around him.

"The cloudsSweep over with their shadows, and beneath,The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;Dark hollows seem to glide along and chaseThe sunny ridges."

The diversity of light and shade upon the swells and depressions at the hour of sunrise, or when at midday clouds are drifting along the sky, is endless. A few points here and there are thrown into prominent relief; while others, deeply retreating, constitute an imaginary back-ground perfect in its kind. And then the sunlight, constantly changing its position, is received upon such a variety of angles, and these, too, so rapidly vary as the breeze rolls over the surface, that it gives the scene a wild and shifting aspect to the eye at times, barely reconcilable with the idea of reality.

As the sun reached the meridian the winds went down, and then the stillness of death hung over the prairie. The utter desolateness of such a scene is indescribable. Not a solitary tree to intercept the vision or to break the monotony; not a sound to cheer the ear or relieve the desolation; not a living thing in all that vast wild plain to tell the traveller that he was not

"Alone, alone, all, all alone,Alone on a wide, wide sea!"

It is at such a season that the question presents itself with more than ordinary vehemence to the mind, To what circumstance do these vast prairies owe their origin? Amid what terrible convulsion of the elements did these great ocean-plains heave themselves into being? What mighty voice has rolled this heaped-up surface into tumult, and then, amid the storm and the tempest, bid the curling billows stand, and fixed them there?

"The hand that built the firmament hath heavedAnd smooth'd these verdant swells."

The origin of the prairie has given rise to much speculation. Some contend that we are to regard these vast plains in the same light as mountains, valleys, forests, and other grand features of Nature's workmanship. And, it is very true, plains of a character not dissimilar are to be met with all over our earth; at every degree of elevation of every extent, and of every stage of fertility, from the exhaustless fecundity of the delta of the Nile to the barren sterility of the sands of the desert. Northern Asia has her boundless pastures and steppes, where the wild Tartar feeds his flock; Africa may boast her Bedouin sands, her tablelands, and her karroos; South America her grassy llanos and pampas; Europe her purple heather; India her jungles; the southern sections of our own land their beautiful savannas; and wherefore not the vast regions of the "Far West" their broad-rolling prairies? The word is of French derivation, signifying meadow; and is applied to every description of surface destitute of timber and clothed with grass. It was, then, upon their own fair prairies of Judea and Mesopotamia that the ancient patriarchs pitched their tents. The tough sward of the prairie, when firmly formed, it is well known, refuses to receive the forest; but, once broken into by the ploughshare or by any other cause, and protected from the autumnal flames, and all is soon rolling with green; and the sumach, the hazel, and the wild-cherry are succeeded by the oak. Such is the argument for the natural origin of the prairie, and its cogency none will deny. But, assuming for a moment a diluvial origin to these vast plains, as a thousand circumstances concur to indicate, and the phenomena are far more satisfactorily and philosophically resolved. In a soil so exhaustlessly fertile, the grasses and herbs would first secure possession of the surface. Even now, whenever the earth is thrown up, from whatever depth, it is immediately mossed with verdure by the countless embryos buried in its teeming bosom; a proof incontestable of secondary origin. After the grasses succeeded flowering shrubs; then the larger weeds; eventually, thickets were formed; the surface was baked and hardened by the direct rays of the sun, and the bosom of the soil, bound up as if by bands of brass and iron, utterly refused to receive or nourish the seeds of the forest now strewn over it. This is the unavoidable conclusion wherever natural causes have held their sway. Upon the borders of rivers, creeks, and overflowing streams, or wherever the soil has become broken, this series of causes was interrupted, and the result we see in the numerous island-groves, and in the forests which invariably fringe the water-courses, great and small. The autumnal fires, too, aboriginal tradition informs us, have annually swept these vast plains from an era which the memory of man faileth to record, scathing and consuming every bush, shrub, or thicket which in the lapse of ages might have aspired to the dignity of a tree; a nucleus around which other trees might have clustered. Here and there, indeed, amid the heaving waste, a desolate, wind-shaken, flame-blackened oak rears its naked branches in the distance; but it is a stricken thing, and only confirms the position assumed. From a concurrence of fortuitous circumstances easily conceived, the solitary seed was received into a genial soil; the tender shrub and the sapling were protected from destruction, and at length it had struggled into the upper air, and defied alike the flames and blasts of the prairie.

The argument of analogy for the natural origin of the prairie may also be fairly questioned, since careful examination of the subject must convince any unprejudiced mind that the similarity of feature between these plains and others with which we are acquainted is not sufficiently striking to warrant comparison. The pampas, the steppes, and the sand-plains, though not unlike in the more prominent characteristics, are yet widely different in configuration, extent, and soil. The prairie combines characteristics of each, exhibiting features of all in common, of no one in particular. Who would institute comparison between the dark-rolling luxuriance of the North American prairie, and the gloomy moor of Northern Europe, with its heavy, funereal mantle of heather and ling. Could the rifest fancy conjure up the weird sisters, all "so withered and so wild in their attire," upon these beautiful plains of the departed Illini! Nor do we meet in the thyme-breathing downs of "merry England," the broad rich levels of France, the grape-clad highlands of Spain, or in the golden mellowness of the Italian Campagna, with a similitude of feature sufficiently striking to identify our own glorious prairies with them. Europe can boast, indeed, no peculiarity of surface assuming like configuration or exhibiting like phenomena.

When, then, we reflect, that of all those plains which spread out themselves upon our globe, the North American prairie possesses characteristics peculiar to itself, and to be met with nowhere beside; when we consider the demonstrations of a soil of origin incontestably diluvial; when we wander over the heaving, billowy surface, and behold it strewed with the rocky offspring of another region, and, at intervals, encased in the saline crust of the ocean-sediment; when we dive into its fathomless bosom, and bring forth the crumbling relics of man and animal from sepulchres into which, for untold cycles, they have been entombed; and when we linger along those rolling streams by which they are intersected, and behold upon their banks the mighty indications of whirling, subsiding floods, and behold buried in the heart of the everlasting rock productions only of the sea, the conviction is forced upon us, almost resistlessly, that here the broad ocean once heaved and roared. To what circumstance, indeed, but a revolution of nature like this, are we to refer that uniform deposition of earthy strata upon the alluvial bottom-land of every stream? to what those deep-cut race-paths which the great streams have, in the lapse of centuries, worn for themselves through the everlasting rock, hundreds of feet? to what those vast salt-plains of Arkansas? those rocky heaps of the same mineral on the Missouri, or those huge isolated masses of limestone, rearing themselves amid the lonely grandeur, a wonder to the savage? Or to what else shall we refer those collections of enormous seashells, heaped upon the soil, or thrown up to its surface from a depth of fifty feet?

Many phenomena in the Valley of the Mississippi concur to confirm the idea that its vast delta-plains, when first forsaken by the waters of the ocean, were possessed by extensive canebrakes, covering, indeed, its entire surface. If, then, we suppose the Indians, who passed from Asia to America in the early centuries of the Christian era, to have commenced the fires in autumn when the reed was like tinder, and the conflagration would sweep over boundless regions, we at once have an hypothesis which accounts for the origin of the prairies. It is at least as plausible as some others. The occasions of the autumnal fires may have been various. The cane-forests must have presented an insurmountable obstacle in travelling, hunting, agriculture, or even residence; while the friction caused by the tempestuous winds of autumn may have kindled numerous fires among the dry reeds.

The surface peculiar to the prairie is first perceived in the State of Ohio. As we proceed north and west it increases in extent, until, a few hundred miles beyond the Mississippi, it rolls on towards the setting sun, in all the majesty and magnificence of boundlessness, to the base of the Rocky Mountains. Such are the beautiful prairies of the fair Far West; and if, gentle reader, my pen, all rapid though it be, has lingered tediously to thee along their fairy borders, it may yet prove no small consolation to thy weariness to reflect that its errings upon the subject are wellnigh ended.

It was yet early in the day, as I have intimated, when I reached the centre of that broad branch of the Grand Prairie over which I was passing; and, mile after mile, the narrow pathway, almost obliterated here and there by the waving vegetation, continued to wind itself along. With that unreflecting carelessness which characterizes the inexperienced wayfarer, I had left behind me the last human habitation I was for hours to look upon, without the slightest refreshment; and now the demands of unappeased nature, sharpened by exercise, by the keen atmosphere of the prairies, and, probably, by the force of fancy, which never fails to aggravate privations which we know to be remediless, had become absolutely painful. The faithful animal beneath me, also, from the total absence of water along our path, was nearly exhausted; and there, before and around, and on every side, not an object met the view but the broad-rolling, limitless prairie, and the dim, misty horizon in the distance. Above, the heavens were calm and blue, and the bright sun was careering on in his giant course as gloriously as if the storm-cloud had never swept his path. League after league the prairie lay behind me, and still swell upon swell, wave after wave, heaved up itself in endless succession before the wearied eye. There is a point, reader, in physical, not less than in moral affairs, where forbearance ceases to be a virtue; and, veritably, suggestions bordering on the horrible were beginning to flit athwart the fancy, when, happily, a long, low, wavering cloud-like line was caught stretching itself upon the extremest verge of the misty horizon. My jaded animal was urged onward; and slowly, very slowly, the dim outline undulated upward, and the green forest rose gradually before the gladdened vision! A few miles, the path plunged into the green, fresh woods; crossed a deep creek, which betrayed its meandering by the grove along its banks, and the hungry traveller threw himself from his horse before a log cabin imbowered in the trees. The spot was one of those luxuriant copses in the heart of the prairie, comprising several hundred acres, so common in the northern sections of Illinois. "Victuals and drink!" were, of course, the first demand from a female who showed herself at the door; and, "I judge" was the laconic but cheering reply. She stared with uncontrolled curiosity at her stranger-guest. At the moment he must have looked a perfect incarnation of ferocity; a very genius of famine and starvation; but, all in good time, he was luxuriating over a huge fragment of swine's flesh, a bowl of honey, and a loaf of bread; and soon were his miseries over. What! honey and hog's flesh not a luxury! Say ye so, reader! Verily, then, were ye never half starved in the heart of a Western prairie!

Salem, Ill.

XXXI

"No leave take I, for I will rideAs far as land will let me.""The long sunny lapse of a summer's daylight.""What fool is this!"As You Like It.

Among that novel variety of feature which the perspicacity of European tourists in America has enabled them to detect of Cis-atlantic character, two traits seem ever to stand forth in striking relief, and are dwelt upon with very evident satisfaction: I allude to Avarice and Curiosity. Upon the former of these characteristics it is not my purpose to comment; though one can hardly have been a traveller, in any acceptation of the term, or in almost any section of our land, without having arrived at a pretty decided opinion upon the subject. Curiosity, however, it will not, I am persuaded, be denied, does constitute a feature, and no inconsiderable one, in our national character; nor would it, perhaps, prove a difficult task to lay the finger upon those precise circumstances in our origin and history as a people which have tended to superinduce a trait of this kind – a trait so disgusting in its ultra development; and yet, in its ultimate nature, so indispensably the mainspring of everything efficient in mind. "Low vice," as the author of Childe Harold has been pleased to stigmatize it; yet upon this single propellant may, in retrospect, be predicated the cause of more that contributes to man's happiness than perhaps upon any other. Frailty of a little mind, as it may be, and is often deemed; yet not the less true is it that the omnipotent workings of this passion have ever been, and must, until the nature of the human mind is radically changed, continue to remain, at once the necessary concomitant and the essential element of a vigorous understanding. If it be, then, indeed true, as writers and critics beyond the waters would fain have us believe, that American national character is thus compounded, so far from blushing at the discovery, we would hail it as a leading cause of our unparalleled advancement as a people in the time past, and as an unerring omen of progression in future.

My pen has been insensibly betrayed into these remarks in view of a series of incidents which, during my few months rambling, have from time to time transpired; and which, while they illustrate forcibly to my mind the position I have assumed, have also demonstrated conclusively the minor consideration, that the passion, in all its phenomena, is by no means, as some would have us believe, restricted to any one portion of our land; that it is, in verity, a characteristic of the entire Anglo-American race! Thus much for sage forensic upon "that low vice, curiosity."

My last number left me luxuriating, with all the gusto of an amateur prairie-wolf fresh from his starving lair, upon the fat and honey of Illinois. During these blessed moments of trencher devotion, several inmates of the little cabin whose hospitality I was enjoying, who had been labouring in the field, successively made their appearance; and to each individual in turn was the traveller handed over, like a bale of suspected contraband merchandise, for supervision. The interrogatories of each were quite the same, embracing name and nativity, occupation, location, and destination, administered with all the formal exactitude of a county-court lawyer. With the inquiries of none, however, was I more amused than with those of a little corpulent old fellow ycleped "Uncle Bill," with a proboscis of exceeding rubicundity, and eyes red as a weasel's, to say nothing of a voice melodious in note as an asthmatic clarionet. The curiosity of the Northern Yankee is, in all conscience, unconscionable enough when aroused; but, for the genuine quintessence of inquisitiveness, commend your enemy, if you have one, to an army of starving gallinippers, or to a backwoods' family of the Far West, who see a traveller twice a year, and don't take the newspaper! Now mark me, reader! I mention this not as a fault of the worthy "Suckers:"206 it is rather a misfortune; or, if otherwise, it surely "leans to virtue's side." A peculiarity, nevertheless, it certainly is; and a striking one to the stranger. Inquiries are constantly made with most unblushing effrontery, which, under ordinary circumstances, would be deemed but a single remove from insult, but at which, under those to which I refer, a man of sense would not for a moment take exception. It is true, as some one somewhere has said, that a degree of inquisitiveness which in the more crowded walks of life would be called impertinent, is perfectly allowable in the wilderness; and nothing is more conceivable than desire for its gratification. As to the people of Illinois, gathered as they are from every "kindred, and nation, and tribe, and language under heaven," there are traits of character among them which one could wish universally possessed. Kind, hospitable, open-hearted, and confiding have I ever found them, whether in the lonely log cabin of the prairie or in the overflowing settlement; and some noble spirits I have met whose presence would honour any community or people.

After my humble but delicious meal was concluded, mine host, a tall, well-proportioned, sinewy young fellow, taking down his rifle from the beckets in which it was reposing over the rude mantel, very civilly requested me to accompany him on a hunting ramble of a few hours in the vicinity for deer. Having but a short evening ride before me, I readily consented; and, leaving the cabin, we strolled leisurely through the shady woods, along the banks of the creek I have mentioned, for several miles; but, though indications of deer were abundant, without success. We were again returning to the hut, which was now in sight on the prairie's edge, when, in the middle of a remark upon the propriety of "disposing of a part of his extensive farm," the rifle of my companion was suddenly brought to his eye; a sharp crack, and a beautiful doe, which the moment before was bounding over the nodding wild-weeds like the summer wind, lay gasping at our feet.

So agreeable did I find my youthful hunter, that I was wellnigh complying with his request to "tarry with him yet a few days," and try my own hand and eye, all unskilled though they be, in gentle venerie; or, at the least, to taste a steak from the fine fat doe. Sed fugit, interea fugit, irreparabile tempus; and when the shades of evening were beginning to gather over the landscape, I had passed over a prairie some eight miles in breadth; and, chilled and uncomfortable from the drenching of a heavy shower, was entering the village of Shelbyville through the trees.207

This is a pleasant little town enough, situated on the west bank of the Kaskaskia River, in a high and heavily-timbered tract. It is the seat of justice for the county from which it takes its name, which circumstance is fearfully portended by a ragged, bleak-looking structure called a courthouse. Its shattered windows, and flapping doors, and weather-stained bricks, when associated with the object to which it is appropriated, perched up as it is in the centre of the village, reminds one of a cornfield scarecrow, performing its duty by looking as hideous as possible. In terrorem, in sooth. Dame Justice seems indeed to have met with most shameful treatment all over the West, through her legitimate representative the courthouse. The most interesting object in the vicinity of Shelbyville is a huge sulphur-spring, which I did not tarry long enough to visit.

"Will you be pleased, sir, to register your name?" was the modest request of mine host, as, having settled the bill, with foot in stirrup, I was about mounting my steed at the door of the little hostlerie of Shelbyville the morning after my arrival. Tortured by the pangs of a curiosity which it was quite evident must now or never be gratified, he had pursued his guest beyond the threshold with this dernier resort to elicit a name and residence. "Register my name, sir!" was the reply. "And pray, let me ask, where do you intend that desirable operation to be performed?" The discomfited publican, with an expression of ludicrous dismay, hastily retreating to the bar-room, soon reappeared gallanting a mysterious-looking little blue-book, with "Register" in ominous characters portrayed upon the back thereof. A name was accordingly soon despatched with a pencil, beneath about a dozen others, which the honest man had probably managed to save in as many years; and, applying the spur, the last glance of the traveller caught the eager features of his host poring over this new accession to his treasure.

The early air of morning was intensely chilling as I left the village and pursued my solitary way through the old woods; but, as the sun went up the heavens, and the path emerged upon the open prairie, the transition was astonishing. The effect of emerging from the dusky shades of a thick wood upon a prairie on a summer day is delightful and peculiar. I have often remarked it. It impresses one like passing from the damp, gloomy closeness of a cavern into the genial sunshine of a flower-garden. For the first time during my tour in Illinois was my horse now severely troubled by that terrible insect, so notorious all over the West, the large green-bottle prairie-fly, called the "green-head." My attention was first attracted to it by observing several gouts of fresh blood upon the rein; and, glancing at my horse's neck, my surprise was great at beholding an orifice quite as large as that produced by the fleam from which the dark fluid was freely streaming. The instant one of these fearful insects plants itself upon a horse's body, the rider is made aware of the circumstance by a peculiar restlessness of the animal in every limb, which soon becomes a perfect agony, while the sweat flows forth at every pore. The last year208 was a remarkable one for countless swarms of these flies; many animals were killed by them; and at one season it was even dangerous to venture across the broader prairies except before sunrise or after nightfall. In the early settlement of the county, these insects were so troublesome as in a great measure to retard the cultivation of the prairies; but, within a few years, a yellow insect larger than the "green-head" has made its appearance wherever the latter was found, and, from its sweeping destruction of the annoying fly, has been called the "horse-guard." These form burrows by penetrating the earth to some depth, and there depositing the slaughtered "green-heads." It is stated that animals become so well aware of the relief afforded by these insects and of their presence, that the traveller recognises their arrival at once by the quiet tranquillity which succeeds the former agitation. Ploughing upon the prairies was formerly much delayed by these insects, and heavy netting was requisite for the protection of the oxen.