goin' to take another snooze!"

Henri was indeed, at that moment, indulging in a gigantic stretch and
a cavernous yawn; but he finished both hastily, and rushed at his poor
horse as if he intended to slay it on the spot. He only threw the
saddle on its back, however, and then threw himself on the saddle.

"Now then, all ready?"

"Ay"--"Oui, yis!"

And away they went at full stretch again on their journey.

Thus day after day they travelled, and night after night they laid
them down to sleep under the trees of the forest, until at length they
reached the edge of the Great Prairie.

It was a great, a memorable day in the life of Dick Varley, that on
which he first beheld the prairie--the vast boundless prairie. He had
heard of it, talked of it, dreamed about it, but he had never--no, he
had never realized it. 'Tis always thus. Our conceptions of things
that we have not seen are almost invariably wrong. Dick's eyes
glittered, and his heart swelled, and his cheeks flushed, and his
breath came thick and quick.

"There it is," he gasped, as the great rolling plain broke suddenly on
his enraptured gaze; "that's it--oh!--"

Dick uttered a yell that would have done credit to the fiercest chief
of the Pawnees, and being unable to utter another word, he swung his
cap in the air and sprang like an arrow from a bow over the mighty
ocean of grass. The sun had just risen to send a flood of golden glory
over the scene, the horses were fresh, so the elder hunters, gladdened
by the beauty of all around them, and inspired by the irresistible
enthusiasm of their young companion, gave the reins to the horses and
flew after him. It was a glorious gallop, that first headlong dash
over the boundless prairie of the "far west."

The prairies have often been compared, most justly, to the ocean.
There is the same wide circle of space bounded on all sides by the
horizon; there is the same swell, or undulation, or succession of long
low unbroken waves that marks the ocean when it is calm; they are
canopied by the same pure sky, and swept by the same untrammelled
breezes. There are islands, too--clumps of trees and
willow-bushes--which rise out of this grassy ocean to break and
relieve its uniformity; and these vary in size and numbers as do the
isles of ocean, being numerous in some places, while in others they
are so scarce that the traveller does not meet one in a long day's
journey. Thousands of beautiful flowers decked the greenswar