![]() ![]() It was fastened round the waist by a girdle of buckskin, to which was also appended a bullet pouch, made of the same material with the cap. He wore a cap made of the skin of the otter, and a hunting-shirt of blue linsey-wolsey covered his body, descending nearly to the knees, and trimmed with red woollen fringe. ![]() The elder seemed advanced in years, and was dressed in the usual habiliments of the country. It was during the latter season that the incidents of our story took place.Ībout the middle of December, some ten or twelve years ago, before Illinois was admitted a sister State into the union, on the afternoon of a day that had been uncommonly severe, and during the morning of which there had occurred a light fall of snow, two persons were seen riding along one of the immense prairies, in a northern direction. Then those extensive plains, lately covered with the infinitely diversified charms of nature, become one white unvaried waste through the vistas of the naked trees, nothing meets the glance but snow and if from the chilly monotony of earth, the wearied eye looks up to heaven, thick and heavy clouds, driven along upon the wind, seem overcharged to bursting, with the same frigid element. ![]() Such is their summer aspect but when winter “has taken angrily his waste inheritance,” not even the painter’s pencil can convey a just conception of the bleakness and desolation of the change. But the wide-spread prairie, level as some waveless lake, from whose fertile soil the grass springs up with a luxuriance unparalleled in any other part of our country, and whose beautiful green is besprinkled with myriads and myriads of flowers, ravishing the sight with their loveliness, and filling the air with their sweets and, again, on either side of these immense savannas, standing arrayed, “like host to host opposed,” the leafy forests, whose silence has not often been broken by the voice of man, and through whose verdant recesses the deer stalk in herds, with the boldness of primeval nature,-these are some of the scenes that call forth a passing tribute of praise from every beholder. The majestic mountain, upholding the heavens on its cloudy top, does not, to be sure, arrest his astonished eye and the roaring cataract, dashing from a dizzy height, and thundering down into whirling depths below, then rising again in upward showers, forms no part of the character of their quiet scenes. The traveler who passes, during the summer or autumn months of the year, through the States of our union that lie west of the Ohio river, Indiana and Illinois in particular, will often pause in his journey, with feelings of irrepressible admiration, to gaze upon the ten thousand beauties which nature has spread through these regions with an uncommonly liberal hand. Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes. ![]()
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