Page:Six months in Kansas.djvu/39

Rh toms, is remarkably fine—winding in most picturesque curves through open, unfenced prairie and grand old oak groves, as free from underbrush as a gentleman's well-kept grounds, with trees such as make the Saxon blood quicken at their height and antiquity.

There is one point here which I can never forget, midway between Kansas City and the extreme border of the Shawnee Reserve. After walking down a steep ravine, crossing the creek on stones, climbing the opposite bank, tired, and out of breath, we packed away again in the cart, and the faithful mules started off briskly, up, up, a long way. We then came into a broad mowing field of a thousand acres— smooth as a lawn, but by no means a dead level; not a fence to be seen, nor a habitation. The sun lay at our right, nearly down; but he did not cheat us, as he often does at home, by the device of a hill close at hand, behind which he seems to look over to say, with the familiarity of a near neighbor, "Good night." No indeed, there was nothing so cozy about this scene. Grand, beyond all conception it was, but stern and distant, like the life of the understanding without affection. In the midst of