n figure, dress, and mien,
seemed to belong to a station in society several gradations above that
of any one of her visible associates. The second vehicle was covered
with a top of cloth so tightly drawn, as to conceal its contents,
with the nicest care. The remaining wagons were loaded with such rude
furniture and other personal effects, as might be supposed to belong
to one, ready at any moment to change his abode, without reference to
season or distance.

Perhaps there was little in this train, or in the appearance of its
proprietors, that is not daily to be encountered on the highways of this
changeable and moving country. But the solitary and peculiar scenery,
in which it was so unexpectedly exhibited, gave to the party a marked
character of wildness and adventure.

In the little valleys, which, in the regular formation of the land,
occurred at every mile of their progress, the view was bounded, on two
of the sides, by the gradual and low elevations, which gave name to
the description of prairie we have mentioned; while on the others,
the meagre prospect ran off in long, narrow, barren perspectives, but
slightly relieved by a pitiful show of coarse, though somewhat luxuriant
vegetation. From the summits of the swells, the eye became fatigued with
the sameness and chilling dreariness of the landscape. The earth was not
unlike the Ocean, when its restless waters are heaving heavily, after
the agitation and fury of the tempest have begun to lessen. There
was the same waving and regular surface, the same absence of foreign
objects, and the same boundless extent to the view. Indeed so very
striking was the resemblance between the water and the land, that,
however much the geologist might sneer at so simple a theory, it would
have been difficult for a poet not to have felt, that the formation of
the one had been produced by the subsiding dominion of the other. Here
and there a tall tree rose out of the bottoms, stretching its naked
branches abroad, like some solitary vessel; and, to strengthen the
delusion, far in the distance, appeared two or three rounded thickets,
looming in the misty horizon like islands resting on the waters. It
is unnecessary to warn the practised reader, that the sameness of
the surface, and the low stands of the spectators, exaggerated the
distances; but, as swell appeared after swell, and island succeeded
island, there was a disheartening assurance that long, and seemingly
interminable, tracts