this straight, unbroken, prison-line of the
horizon. Yet one could not but reflect upon the weariness of those who
passed by there in old days, at the foot's pace of oxen, painfully
urging their teams, and with no landmark but that unattainable evening
sun for which they steered, and which daily fled them by an equal
stride. They had nothing, it would seem, to overtake; nothing by which
to reckon their advance; no sight for repose or for encouragement; but
stage after stage, only the dead green waste under foot, and the
mocking, fugitive horizon. But the eye, as I have been told, found
differences even here; and at the worst the emigrant came, by
perseverance, to the end of his toil. It is the settlers, after all, at
whom we have a right to marvel. Our consciousness, by which we live, is
itself but the creature of variety. Upon what food does it subsist in
such a land? What livelihood can repay a human creature for a life spent
in this huge sameness? He is cut off from books, from news, from
company, from all that can relieve existence but the prosecution of his
affairs. A sky full of stars is the most varied spectacle that he can
hope for. He may walk five miles and see nothing; ten, and it is as
though he had not moved; twenty, and still he is in the midst of the
same great level, and has approached no nearer to the one object within
view, the flat horizon which keeps pace with his advance. We are full at
home of the question of agreeable wall-papers, and wise people are of
opinion that the temper may be quieted by sedative surroundings. But
what is to be said of the Nebraskan settler? His is a wall-paper with a
vengeance--one quarter of the universe laid bare in all its gauntness.
His eye must embrace at every glance the whole seeming concave of the
visible world; it quails before so vast an outlook, it is tortured by
distance; yet there is no rest or shelter, till the man runs into his
cabin, and can repose his sight upon things near at hand. Hence, I am
told, a sickness of the vision peculiar to these empty plains.

Yet perhaps with sunflowers and cicadae, summer and winter, cattle, wife
and family, the settler may create a full and various existence. One
person at least I saw upon the plains who seemed in every way superior
to her lot. This was a woman who boarded us at a way station, selling
milk. She was largely formed; her features were more than comely; she
had that great rarity--a fine complexion which became