e vicinity of the older communities on
the Mississippi River. As one advanced across the State the farm-houses
were very small, and looked like isolated dry-goods boxes; there were
few well-built barns or farm buildings; and the struggling young
cottonwood and soft-maple saplings planted in close groves about the
tiny houses were so slight an obstruction to the sweep of vision across
the open prairie that they only seemed to emphasize the monotonous
stretches of fertile, but uninteresting, plain. Now the landscape is
wholly transformed. A railroad ride in June through the best parts of
Iowa reminds one of a ride through some of the pleasantest farming
districts of England. The primitive "claim shanties" of thirty years ago
have given place to commodious farm-houses flanked by great barns and
hay-ricks, and the well-appointed structures of a prosperous
agriculture. In the rich, deep meadows herds of fine-blooded cattle are
grazing. What was once a blank, dreary landscape is now garden-like and
inviting. The poor little saplings of the earlier days, which seemed to
be apologizing to the robust corn-stalks in the neighboring fields, have
grown on that deep soil into great, spreading trees. One can easily
imagine, as he looks off in every direction and notes a wooded horizon,
that he is--as in Ohio, Indiana, or Kentucky--in a farming region which
has been cleared out of primeval forests. There are many towns I might
mention which twenty-five years ago, with their new, wooden shanties
scattered over the bare face of the prairie, seemed the hottest place on
earth as the summer sun beat upon their unshaded streets and roofs, and
seemed the coldest places on earth when the fierce blizzards of winter
swept unchecked across the prairie expanses. To-day the density of shade
in those towns is deemed of positive detriment to health, and for
several years past there has been a systematic thinning out and trimming
up of the great, clustering elms. Trees of from six to ten feet in girth
are found everywhere by the hundreds of thousands. Each farm-house is
sheltered from winter winds by its own dense groves. Many of the farmers
are able from the surplus growth of wood upon their estates to provide
themselves with a large and regular supply of fuel. If I have dwelt at
some length upon this picture of the transformation of the bleak,
grain-producing Iowa prairies of thirty years ago into the dairy and
live-stock farms of to-day, with their