It was not a Mexico
or a Peru, with emblazoned palaces and glittering temples, nor
yet a California, with gold-flecked sands. It was merely an
unending stretch of wooded hills and grassy plains, bedecked with
majestic forests and fructifying rivers and lakes. It had no
treasures save for the man of courage, industry, and patience;
but for such it held home, broad acres, liberty, and the coveted
opportunity for social equality and advancement.
The new country has been commonly thought of, and referred to by
writers on the history of the West, as a "wilderness"; and
offhand, one might suppose that the settlers were obliged
literally to hew their way through densely grown vegetation to
the spots which they selected for their homes. In point of fact,
there were great areas of upland--not alone in the prairie
country of northern Indiana and Illinois, but in the hilly
regions within a hundred miles of the Ohio--that were almost
treeless. On these unobstructed stretches grasses grew in
profusion; and here roamed great herds of herbivorous
animal-kind--deer and elk, and also buffalo, "filing in grave
procession to drink at the rivers, plunging and snorting among
the rapids and quicksands, rolling their huge bulk on the grass,
rushing upon each other in hot encounter, like champions under
shield.
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