the Cross, although they do not engage even in it without depositing considerable stakes. An extensive meadow is chosen for this sport, and the articles staked are tied to a post, or deposited in the custody of two old men. The combatants being stripped and painted, and each provided with a kind of battledore or racket, in shape resembling the letter P, with a handle about two feet long, and a head loosely wrought with network so as to form a shallow bag, range themselves on different sides. A ball being now tossed up in the middle, each party endeavors to drive it to their respective goals, and much dexterity and agility is displayed in the contest. When a nimble runner gets the ball in his cross, he sets forward towards the goal with the utmost speed, and is followed by the rest, who endeavor to jostle him and shake it out; but if hard pressed he discharges it with a jerk, to be forwarded by his own party, or bandied back by their opponents, until the victory is decided by its passing the goal. Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea (1824).

5. The Glories of the Prairie.

ARCHBISHOP TACHÉ (b. 1823).

To the buffalo hunter the prairie is a country without equal. Winter and summer-there in his empire, there he finds true happiness in urging his swift steed in pursuit of prey, until recently so abundant and easy; it is there that without obstacle and, so to speak, without labor, he lays out roads, bounds over space, and enjoys a spectacle often grand although a little monotonous. Seen in the flower season the prairie is really beautiful, for its verdure-covered ground is quite enamelled with different colors. It is a rich carpet of which the various tints seem to have been arranged by the hands of an artist; it is a sea which, on the least breath, undulates its scented waves. The plain, sometimes so uniform as to show an apparently artificial horizon, suddenly changes into rolling prairie. Its beauty then increases; a thousand little hills now raise themselves here and there, and by their almost regular variety give the idea of waves on the ocean in the midst of a great storm. It appears as if the powerful hand of the Ruler of seas, mocking the fury of the waves, had seized them at the instant of their rising, and by a peremptory order changed them into solid land. In many directions erratic stumps, seen on the top of downs or hillocks, appear in the distance like the petrified spray of foam

ing waves.

Elsewhere the prairie is planted with clumps of trees, and dotted with lakes as pleasing as they are various in form. Here are basins which one would say were the reservoirs of great rivers, and of which the sides carry visible marks of the levels once assigned by the Supreme Artist to these dried-up ponds. Excepting the wild and rugged beauty of large mountains, excepting the view of a great sheet of water bathing a beautiful roadstead, and excepting all natural beauty improved by the art, it is difficult to imagine anything more beautiful, or at least prettier and more lovely than are some parts of the rolling prairie. One might easily believe himself to be in an immense park of which the rich proprietor had called into requisition the most skilled talent. In the midst of these clumps, of these groves, of the rich verdure, of variegated flowers, of innumerable lakes, one asks, Where is the owner to whom belong the large herds quietly grazing in the distance? Who has tamed this gazelle, so fleet, so graceful, that approaches as if to salute the traveller, that fear startles away, that curiosity turns back again? These packs of wolves that sport around you, that bark, that howl and snarl in turn, are they the impatient pack waiting for the signal to start in pursuit of game? Then in autumn what a variety, what a number of aquatic birds cover all these lakes! Ducks sport themselves in thousands; the swan-that habitué of all beautiful artificial waters-is there swimming about with majestic negligence, and cooing its mysterious song. Sketch of the North-West of America (1870).

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6. The Prairies.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878).

["The power of suggestion and of rapid generalization, which was the keynote of The Ages,' lived anew in every line of The Prairies,' in which a series of poems present themselves to the imagination as a series of pictures in a gallery pictures in which breadth and vigor of treatment and exquisite delicacy of detail are everywhere harmoniously blended, and the unity of pure art is attained. It was worth going to the ends of the world to be able to write The Prairies.'"-R. H. STODDARD.]

These are the gardens of the desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name-
The prairies. I behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch,

In airy undulations, far away,

As if the Ocean, in his gentlest swell,

Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,
And motionless for ever. Motionless?
No; they are all unchained again. The clouds
Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase
The sunny ridges. Breezes of the south!
Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,
And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,

Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not-ye have played
Among the palms of Mexico and vines

Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks
That from the fountains of Sonora* glide
Into the calm Pacific-have ye fanned

A nobler or a lovelier scene than this?

Man hath no power in all this glorious work;

The hand that built the firmament hath heaved

And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes
With herbage, planted them with island groves,

And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor
For this magnificent temple of the sky-

With flowers whose glory and whose multitude
Rival the constellations! The great heavens
Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love-
A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue,

Than that which bends above our eastern hills.
As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed,
Among the high rank grass that sweeps his sides,
The hollow beating of his footsteps seems
A sacrilegious sound. I think of those

Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here—
The dead of other days? And did the dust

Of these fair solitudes once stir with life

And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds
That overlook the rivers, or that rise

In the dim forest crowded with old oaks,

Answer! A race, that long has passed away,

Built them ;-a disciplined and populous race

Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek
Was hewing the Pentelicus+ to forms

Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock

* Sonora, a state in the north-west part of the Republic of Mexico, containing in the rainy season numerous lakes, which are drained chiefly by the rivers Mayo and Yaqui.

+ Pentelicus, a mountain of Attica, in Greece, famous for its white marble, which was much used by Athenian sculptors.

The glittering Parthenon.* These ample fields
Nourished their harvests, here their herds were fed,
When haply by their stalls the bison lowed,
And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke.
All day this desert murmured with their toils,
Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked, and wooed
In a forgotten language; and old tunes,

From instruments of unremembered form,

Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man came-
The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce-
And the mound-builders vanished from the earth.
The solitude of centuries untold

Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf
Hunts in their meadows, and fresh-dug den
Yawns by my path. The gophert mines the ground
Where stood their swarming cities.
All is gone;

All, save the piles of earth that hold their bones,
The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods,
The barriers which they builded from the soil
To keep the foe at bay-till o'er the walls
The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,

The strongholds of the plain were forced and heaped
With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood
Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres,
And sat unscared and silent at their feast.
Haply some solitary fugitive,

Lurking in marsh and forest till the sense
Of desolation and of fear became

Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die.
Man's better nature triumphed then, kind words
Welcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors
Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose
A bride among their maidens, and at length
Seemed to forget-yet ne'er forgot the wife
Of his first love, and her sweet little ones,
Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race.

Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise
Races of living things, glorious in strength,
And perish, as the quickening breath of God
Fills them, or is withdrawn. The red man, too,
Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so long,
And nearer to the Rocky Mountains sought

*Parthenon, the celebrated temple of Athena, built on the highest point of the Acropolis (or citadel-hill) of Athens.

+ Gopher (Fr. gaufre, a honeycomb), a name given by French settlers to various burrowing animals, but principally to the prairie-squirrel and the pouched-rat.