“And ever and anon some bright white shaft
  Burnt through the pine-tree roof, here burnt
    and there,
  As if God’s messenger through the close
    wood-screen
  Plunged and re-plunged his weapon at a venture.”

Even where fields have begun to be tilled and houses and barns to be built, the scared flying of domestic animals at sound of the terrific visitor,—­the resistless chariot of civilization with scythed axles mowing down ignorance and prejudice as it whirls along,—­tells a whole story of change and wonder.  We can almost see the shadows of the past escaping into the dim woods, or flitting over the boundless prairie, shivering at the fearful whistle, and seeking shelter from the wind of our darting.

The season for this romantic pleasure of piercing primeval Nature on the wings of subtilest Art is rapidly drawing to a close.  How few penetrable regions can we now find where the rail-car is a novelty!  The very cows and horses, in most places, know when to expect it, and hardly vouchsafe a sidelong glance as they munch their green dinner.  A railroad to the Pacific may give excitement of this kind a somewhat longer date, but those who would enjoy the sensation on routes already in use must begin their explorings at once.  There is no time to be lost.  If we much longer spend all our summers in beating the changeless paths of the Old World, our chance for the fresh but fleeting delight I have been speaking of will have passed by, never to return.  It were unwise to lose this, one of the few remaining avenues to a new sensation.  Europe will keep; but the prairies will not, the woods will not, hardly the rivers.  Already the flowery waving oceans of Illinois begin to abound in ships, or what seem such,—­houses looming up from the horizon, like three-masters sometimes, sometimes schooners, and again little tentative sloops.  These are creeping nearer and nearer together, filling and making commonplace those lovely deserts where the imagination can still find wings, and world-wearied thought a temporary repose.  Where neighbors were once out of beacon-sight, they are now within bell-sound; and however pleasant this may be for the neighbors, it is not so good for the traveller, especially the traveller who has seen Europe.  Only think of a virgin forest or prairie, after over-populated Belgium or finished England!  Europeans understand the thing, and invariably rush for the prairies; but we Americans, however little we may have seen of either world, care little for the wonders of our own.  Yet, when we go abroad, we cannot help blushing to acknowledge that we have not seen the most striking features of our own country.  I speak from experience.  Scott, describing the arid wastes of the Hebrides,—­

  “Placed far amid the melancholy main,”

and swept bare by wintry-cold sea-breezes, said,—­

  “Yes! ’twas sublime, but sad; the loneliness
   Loaded thy heart, the desert tired thine eye.”