reared already his aspiring
person to the standard height of his race. There were one or two others, of
different mould, whose descriptions must however be referred to the regular
course of the narrative.
    Of the females, there were but two who had arrived at womanhood; though
several white-headed, olive-skinn'd faces were peering out of the foremost wagon
of the train, with eyes of lively curiosity and characteristic animation. The
elder of the two adults was the sallow and wrinkled mother of most of the party,
and the younger was a sprightly, active girl of eighteen, who in figure, dress
and mien, seemed to belong to a station in society several gradations above that
of any one of her visible associates. The second vehicle was covered with a top
of cloth so tightly drawn, as to conceal its contents, with the nicest care. The
remaining wagons were loaded with such rude furniture and other personal effects
as might be supposed to belong to one ready, at any moment to change his abode,
without reference to season or distance.
    Perhaps there was little in this train, or in the appearance of its
proprietors, that is not daily to be encountered on the highways of this
changeable and moving country. But the solitary and peculiar scenery, in which
it was so unexpectedly exhibited, gave to the party a marked character of
wildness and adventure.
    In the little vallies which, in the regular formation of the land, occurred
at every mile of their progress, the view was bounded, on two of the sides, by
the gradual and low elevations, which give name to the description of Prairie we
have mentioned; while on the others, the meagre prospect ran off in long,
narrow, barren perspectives, but slightly relieved by a pitiful show of coarse,
though somewhat luxuriant vegetation. From the summits of the swells, the eye
became fatigued with the sameness and chilling dreariness of the landscape. The
earth was not unlike the ocean, when its restless waters are heaving heavily,
after the agitation and fury of the tempest have begun to lessen. There was the
same waving and regular surface, the same absence of foreign objects, and the
same boundless extent to the view. Indeed so very striking was the resemblance
between the water and the land, that, however much the geologist might sneer at
so simple a theory, it would have been difficult for a poet not to have felt
that the formation of the one had been produced by the subsiding dominion of the
other. Here and there a tall tree rose out of the bottoms, stretching its naked
branches abroad,