Page:The Englishwoman in America (IA englishwomaninam00birdrich).pdf/153

 they were all precipitated into the water. Fortunately it was not deep, so they merely underwent its cooling influences, which they bore with admirable equanimity, only one making a bitter complaint, that he had spoiled his "go-to-meetins." The farther west we went, the more dangerous the neighbourhood became. At all the American stations there are placards warning people to beware of pickpockets; but from Indiana westward they bore the caution, "Beware of pickpockets, swindlers, and luggage-thieves." At many of the depôts there is a general rush for the last car, for the same reason that there is a scramble for the stern cabins in a steamer,—viz. the explosive qualities of the boilers.

We travelled the whole of that night, our fellow-passengers becoming more extravagant in appearance at every station, and morning found us on the prairies. Cooper influences our youthful imaginations by telling us of the prairies—Mayne Reid makes us long to cross them; botanists tell us of their flowers, sportsmen of their buffaloes —but without seeing them few people can form a correct idea of what they are really like.

The sun rose over a monotonous plain covered with grass, rank, high, and silky-looking, blown before the breeze into long, shiny waves. The sky was blue above, and the grass a brownish green beneath; wild pigeons and turkeys flew over our heads; the horizontal line had not a single inequality; all was hot, unsuggestive, silent, and monotonous. This was the grass prairie.

A belt of low timber would bound the expanse, and on