The prairies are not as flat in surface as one expects to find them.  Except in the scarcity of trees, their surface is very much like other portions of what is considered the best farming land.  There are great tracts of what are called bushy prairies, covered with a thick growth of hazel and sassafras, jessamine and honey-suckle, and abounding in grape-vines.  These tracts possess springs in abundance.  The “islands” so often alluded to by travellers are most picturesque and beautiful features in the landscape.  They must not be compared to oases, for they are surrounded by anything but sterility; but they are the evidence of springs, and generally of a slight rise in the ground, and the timber upon them is of almost tropical luxuriance.  Herds of deer are feeding in their shade, the murmur of wild bees fills the air, and the sweet vine-smell invites birds and insects of every brilliant color.  Prairie-chickens are in flocks everywhere, and the approach of civilization scarcely ever disturbs them.  No engine-driver in the southern part of the State but has often seen deer startled by the approach of his train, and many tell tales of more ferocious denizens of the wilds.  Buffalo have all long since disappeared; but what times they must have had in this their paradise, before they went!  On the higher prairies the grass is of a superior quality, and its seed almost like wheat.  On those which are low and humid it grows rank and tough, and sometimes so high that a man on horseback may pass through it unobserved.  The crowding of vegetation, owing to the over-fertility of the soil, causes all to tend upward, so that most of the growth is extra high, rather than spreading in breadth.  In the very early spring, the low grass is interspersed with quantities of violets, strawberry-blossoms, and other delicate flowers.  As the grass grows taller, flowers of larger size and more brilliant hues diversify it, till at length the whole is like a flowery forest, but destined to be burnt over in the autumn, leaving their ashes to help forward the splendid growth of their successors.

One of the marvels of this marvellous prairiedom, at the present hour, is the taste and skill displayed in houses and gardens.  One fancies a “settler” in the Western wilds so occupied with thoughts of shelter and sustenance as hardly to remember that a house must be perpendicular to be safe, and a garden fenced before it is worth planting.  But every mile of our prairie-flight reminds us, that, where no time and labor are to be consumed in felling trees and “toting” logs to mill,—­planks and joists, and such like, walking in, by rail, all ready for the framing,—­there is leisure for reflection and choice as to form; and also, that, where fertility is the inevitable attendant upon the first incision of the plough, what we shall plant and how we shall plant it become the only topics for consideration.  Setting aside the merely temporary residences of the poorer class