h its dead,
tinder-like remains. How far human improvidence and
recklessness--especially that of our own destructive Caucasian race--has
contributed to denude the Plains of the little wood that thinly dotted
their surface at a period not very remote, I can not pretend to decide;
but it is very evident that there are far fewer trees now standing than
there were even one century ago.

Of rocks rising above or nearing the surface, the Plains are all but
destitute; hence their eminent lack first of wood, then of moisture.
Your foot will scarcely strike a pebble from Lawrence to Denver; and the
very few rocky terraces or perpendicular ridges you encounter appear to
be a concrete of sand and clay, hardened to stone by the persistent,
petrifying action of wind and rain. Of other rock, save the sandstone
ridges already noticed, there is none: hence the rivers, though running
swiftly, are never broken by falls; hence the prairie-fires are nowhere
arrested by swamps or marshes; hence the forests, if this region was
ever generally wooded, have been gradually swept away and devoured,
until none remain. In fact, from the river bottoms of the lower Kansas
to those of the San Joaquin and Sacramento, there is no swamp, though
two or three miry meadows of inconsiderable size, near the South Pass,
known as 'Ice Springs' and 'Pacific Springs,' are of a somewhat swampy
character. Beside these, there is nothing approximating the natural
meadows of New England, the fenny, oozy flats of nearly all inhabited
countries. Bilious fevers find no aliment in the dry, pure breezes of
this elevated region; but this exemption is dearly bought by the absence
of lakes, of woods, of summer rains, and unfailing streams.

Vast, rarely-trodden forests are wild and lonely: the cit who plunges
into one, a stranger to its ways, is awed by its gloom, its silence, its
restricted range of vision, its stifled winds, and its generally
forbidding aspect. He may talk bravely and even blithely to his
companions, but his ease and gayety are unnatural: Leatherstocking is at
home in the forest, but Pelham is not, and can not be. On the better
portion of the Plains--say in the heart of the Buffalo region--it is
otherwise: though you are hundreds of miles from a human habitation
other than a rude mail-station tent or ruder Indian lodge, the country
wears a subdued, placid aspect; you rise a gentle slope of two or three
miles, and look down the opposite incline or 'divide,'