Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/405

Rh giants of nature, Trenton and Niagara, sailed across the great lakes Ontario, Erie, Michigan, to visit the Swedish and Norwegian settlements on the Mississippi, partook of Swedish hospitality, and saw Swedish roses bloom freshly in the new soil, and beheld a new Scandinavia arising in the wilderness of the West. After that I advanced up the Mississippi, to the region where lie the sources of the Great River; saw glorious mountainous scenery, ruin-like crags, ascending above oak-crowded hills, ruins of the primeval ages when the first-born Titans of nature, the Megatherium, the Mastodon, the Icthyosaurian, wandered alone over the earth, and man as yet did not exist. And he is still an unfrequent guest in these immense wildernesses, where it is yet silent and desolate. It is true that here and there a little log-hut is erected at the foot of the hills on the banks of the Mississippi, and that beside it is seen a little field of Indian corn; that is the first trace of civilisation in these regions. But it is like the print of the one human foot on Robinson Crusoe's uninhabited island. Close beside it are the primeval forests of the wilderness, where only the wild beasts, and Indians in perpetual warfare with each other, have their dwelling. Close beside it are those immense prairies, the flowery deserts of the Mississippi valley, where the grass waves like heavy billows, far, far away towards the distant horizon, untouched by human hands, because here there are no human hands to mow, not one thousandth part. And that which made a deeper impression upon me than Niagara, than anything which I have seen in this hemisphere, or in Europe, are these immeasurable prairie views which belong to the valley of the Mississippi, and which increase in extent the nearer they approach the Great River. It is glorious to behold these ocean-like views, with their waves of sunflowers and their lofty heaving billows of grass beneath the heaven of America, clear and resplendent with sunshine, or through bright