Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/72

66 After leaving the country of the Shawnees we came into that of the Kanzas Indians. Theirs, also, is a very beautiful country; entirely in a state of nature. It differs but little from the Western part of Missouri, except that the surface is more undulating, and that it has less timber. Here we left the last traces of civilization, and seemed, for a time, to be beyond even the borders of animated existence. Not even the song of a bird broke upon the surrounding stillness; and, save the single track of the Emigrants, winding away over the hills, not a foot print broke the rich unvaried verdure of the broad forest-begirt prairies; and in the little islet groves that dotted the plain—the wooded strips that wound along with the course of the rivulet—and the blue wall that surrounded, not a trunk was scarred nor a twig was broken. It was a vast, beautiful and perfect picture, which nature herself had drawn, and the hand of man had never violated. No decoration of art, mingled to confuse or mar the perfection. All was natural, beautiful, unbroken. The transition had been sudden, as the change was great. Every thing was calculated to inspire the mind with feelings of no common kind. He, alone, who for the first time stands upon the deck of some tall ship, whose sails are spread before the breeze, and whose foaming prow looks steadily towards some distant clime, when for the first time he sees the loved shores of his native land sink into the wave, and the blue waters of the treacherous deep gather around him, may appreciate the sensations which awakened in our hearts when here we reflected upon where we were, and what we had undertaken: when the past; all that we had left behind us—nothing less than the whole civilized world, with all of its luxuries, comforts, and most of its real necessities—society, friends, home,—all that is in this world dear to man: when the future, dark and uncertain—presenting nothing but a vast extent of drear and desert