cal and grand scale. One such man chartered special trains to
bring out from the middle States his proposed clients or victims. To
meet the trains he owned as many as twenty-five motor-cars, in which at
once on arrival these people were driven all over the property to make
their selection.

The first breaking of this prairie country is done with huge steam
ploughs, having each twelve shares, so that the breaking is done very
rapidly, the depth cultivated being only some two inches or three
inches. The thick close sod folds over most beautifully and exactly, and
it was always a fascinating sight, if a sad one, to watch this
operation--the first opening up of this soil that had lain uncultivated
for so many aeons of time. The seed may be simply scattered on the sod
before the breaking, and often a splendid crop is thus obtained.
Simplicity of culture, truly!

[Illustration: BREAKING THE PRAIRIE.]

[Illustration: FIRST CROP--MILO MAIZE.]

Before leaving the United States of America a few notes about that
country. Though as a rule physically unpicturesque, it has some great
wonder-places and beauty spots, such as the Yosemite Valley, the Grand
Canon of the Colorado, the Yellowstone Park, the Falls of Niagara, and
the big trees of California, which trees it may be now remarked are
conifers (Sequoia gigantea and Sequoia sempervirens), which attain a
height of 400 feet. Sempervirens is so called because young trees
develop from the roots of a destroyed parent.

If the reader has never seen these enormous trees he cannot well
appreciate their immense altitude and dimensions. Remember that our own
tallest and noblest trees in England do not attain more than 100 feet or
so in height; then try to imagine those having four times that height
and stems or trunks proportionately huge. It is like comparing our
five-storey buildings with the forty-storey buildings of New York, eight
times their altitude.

Yet these big trees are not so big as the gums of Australia; the
Yellowstone Geysers are, or were, inferior to the like in New Zealand;
and Niagara is surpassed by the Zambesi Falls, still more so by the
waterfall in Paraguay, and infinitely so by the recently-discovered
falls in British Guiana. The Guayra Falls, on the Parana River, in
Paraguay, though not so high in one leap as Niagara, have twice as great
a bulk of water, which rushes through a gorge only 200 feet wide.

Its cities, such as San Francisco, Chicago, St Louis,