A CLASSIC OF THE PRAIRIES.*
SINCE the trunk lines of railway joined the Atlantic and Pacific the prairies of North America have been almost forgotten. When the fringe of white men was ,advancing across the continent westwards slowly in the " prairie schooners," as the waggons drawn by ox or mule were called, the prairies were the scene of every kind of adventure and wild romance,—a fertile wilderness of grass, hills, woods, and rivers, into which the pioneers wandered at will, were lost for a while, and then, if they survived the attacks of the prairie Indians, were rediscovered living as patriarchs amid children and grandchildren, flocks and herds, the founders of what were then deemed permanent settlements. Now the whOle movement of migration is to the extreme West,—to the mountains, mines, and coast. The central plains are crossed by corridor trains, which are the " liners" of land locOmo-
tion ; and the prairies are as little regarded by the crew of the train when once they are all aboard as is the surrounding ocean by the passengers on the Campania.'
Mr. Paul Fountain, the author of the delightful book here dealt with, whose first effort it appears to be, brings to his pleasant work the experience of more than forty years of life in the valley of the Upper Mississippi and its tributaries, and of old prairie days, of modern conditions, and of the facts of Indian and frontier life. He is also a keen naturalist, noticing and recording the interesting features of wild life which escape so many minds occupied with the daily difficulties of travel and adventure ; and he writes, not in the mannered style which seems to have become consecrated to descriptions of frontier life, of which most readers mast by this time be thoroughly sick, but with a quiet and leisurely treatment suited to his subject. The great deserts and forests of North America cover a vast area. But though on a great scale, they fall into types. Of these the true prairie is the most striking, and perhaps the most in- spiring. Among the classics of its history are the pages of Fenimore Cooper, who in The Prairie describes the last days of his famous hunter, who, beginning as Deerslayer in the Eastern forests, becomes the Pathfinder on the great lakes, and compelled by irresistible instinct to keep on the fringe of the advancing wave, is discovered as the old prairie trapper in the final ,volume. Audubon and Catlin have recorded their views of old prairie life, the first in the journals of his voyages up the Mississippi, and the latter in his splendidly illustrated description of his stay among the Mandans, in the days of the buffalo dance and scalping-knife. But Audubon's Mississippi journals are insufferably dull, and Catlin is too occupied with painting his Indian friends to have much time for describing the land they lived in. We have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Fountain's pages dealing with the prairie, the Red Men, the Mississippi Valley, the Arizona plains, and the old days of the Yosemite Valley, of Salt Lake City, old Indian fights, and the buffalo herd, are as valuable a contribution to the story of North America as we have read. It will be a record for reference in the too near future when much of what he describes will have vanished. More- over, he writes with a knowledge of nearly the whole conti- nent, including the pampas and Equatorial forests. But the prairie is what he Imes best, and the great river of the prairies, the Mississippi. Though his descriptive prose is sober, and his adventures many and well told, he cannot con- tain his pen as he writes of this dear wilderness :— " Ah, how I pity those who cannot realise the sense of freedom, of health and strength, that the very odour of the prairies gives a man. There is no air like the prairie air; no, not even the
freshness of the boundless ocean itself I have experi- enced that a life on the prairies will increase a man's strength twenty or thirty per cent. It is a common thing for a hunter to eat a dozen pounds of meat per day, and feel the better for it. You soon feel that there is no limit to your physical powers. You feel that to lift an ox would entail but trifling exertion of muscular power. The saying, Oh, King, live for ever,' 'loses its Eastern exaggerati.in in your esteem, for the very thought of death is lost in the courage born of the purity and sweetness you inhale with every breath of prairie air. The loveliness and variety of the prairie odours are indescribable. So are its superb wild flowers. It is a paradise. No man who has lived on it long enough to know it and love it (no great time can assure you) ever experiences real happiness after he has left it."
The reader will do well to take him as guide over this paradise, remembering what the old Greek said of Arabia (the blessed)— " from this country there is a smell, wondrous sweet." The Far 'West contrasts sharply with the grass prairie, the great river, and the Cyprus swamps described in the opening chapters. The feet of the mountains sparkle with rivers ; whispering spruce groves wave on their lower slopes ; abundant grass and water, game and fish, are there for beast and man ; and above is the everlasting reservoir of the eternal snows. Yet between these ranges lie, as a rule, deserts, arid and bare and sterile, yet not devoid of life. Here is a scene on the Utah Desert on the way to the happy valley of Yosemite :—
"Two lynxes were seen crossing the desert, and many large hares, while the Californian condor was daily hovering over us, and occasionally pitching on the plains, but never very near us. They probably returned to the mountains to roost every night, a hundred-mile flight being a mere trifle to these strong- winged birds. I have often tried to time the flight of these birds, not very successfully perhaps. Years after this journey
took place I saw them outstrip the trains on the Great Pacific Railway, which were going at a greater rate than forty miles an hour. So graceful and motionless was the flight of these splendid birds, that it was difficult to realise that they were moving so swiftly. Yet the progress could not have been less than sixty miles an hour, and was, I think, much more. Flying directly from you, with their heavy measured wing strokes, if they do not turn, they go completely out of sight in a minute and a half, and they must be visible at a considerably greater distance than a mile and a half."
We wonder whether they were visible at the distance. It is quite possible in that clear atmosphere. But it is not evi- dence that the birds could fly at that rate of speed in a calm, though that, again, is not impossible. In measuring the speeds of several species of large birds by the aid of stop- watches, the present writer found that a rate of more than thirty miles an hour was uncommon, though the addition of a thirty-mile wind would easily raise the speed to sixty miles an hour before it. But a condor's flight feather is nearly twice the size of that of any other bird in breadth and substance, and so exquisitely made that a down-stroke with a single primary feather made by the hand gives a distinct feeling of levitation.
Mr. Fountain has seen the surviving Red Men of all tribes, from the lowest Apache " wolves," whom he has fought., to the civilised Chocktaws and Cherokees. His chapter on the Red Man is a masterly summary of the history of the race, their struggle with the white man, of whom the Pilgrim Fathers were among their worst oppressors, and their character and physique. His pages leave a very favourable impression of this vanishing race. . Space does not permit quotation of this, or of the chapters of description of the typical land surface of the Centre and West, but each and every class of reader will find them well worth careful perusal. In con- clusion we may say that this book deserves a place among the classics of reflective travel and scenery in North America.
The style is simple, the matter ample, and the treatment sincere.
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