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Updated: July 7, 2025
Many an accident of flood and field, many a "hair-breadth 'scape" are to be encountered in a journey through prairie-land, and the most confident calculations of the traveller are often rendered worthless in a single moment. So we found to our consternation. The accident which befel us was one of a deplorable character.
The utmost area of land which the average Portuguese peasant can cultivate is two and a half acres: in the United States the average of cultivated land per laborer is over thirty-two acres; on prairie-land sixty acres is not uncommon. Forrester writes: "In the Alto Douro, the richest portion of the kingdom, the villages are formed of wretched hovels with unglazed windows and without chimneys.
At sunset we passed, upon an eminence on our left, the ruins of an ancient settlement, called after its patron Saint, Ao Barhe: and both sides of the mountain road were flanked by tracts of prairie-land, beautifully purpling in the evening air. After a ride of thirty-five miles, we arrived at a large fold, where, by removing the inner thorn-fences, we found fresh grass for our starving beasts.
He was a lover of nature, too, and his flashing eyes glanced observantly from side to side as they swept along, sometimes through glades of forest trees; sometimes through belts of more open ground and shrubbery; anon by the margin of a stream, or along the shores of a little lake, and often over short stretches of flowering prairie-land, while the firm, elastic turf sent up a muffled sound from the tramp of their mettlesome chargers.
The sun was just sinking as we left the belt of wood land in which our village stood, crossed over a short plain, descended a dark hollow, at the bottom of which the river flowed, and following its course for a considerable distance, turned off to the right and emerged upon a sweep of prairie-land.
"Think of Paris or New York at eleven o'clock," said Lorry, a trifle awed by the solitude of the sleeping city. "It's as dead as a piece of prairie-land," said his friend. "'Gad, it makes me sleepy to look down that street. It's a mile to the hotel, too, Lorry. We'd better move along." "Let's lie down near the hedge, smoke another cigar and wait till midnight.
Its surface aspect differs considerably from the rest of prairie-land, nor is it of uniform appearance in every part. This steppe is in several places rent by chasms a thousand feet in depth, and walled in on both sides by rugged impassable precipices.
The only approach to grandeur are the long surges and white combers of the mournful and misty Atlantic. They roll like the waving prairie-land, curl their huge heads, and dash down in a fury of foam. 'On the top of a billow we ride, with a witness. Here and there black dots peer through the surf, and to touch them is death.
"But I have discovered the proof of a far greater marvel concerning this prairie-land of yours. A sea tumbled over it, as I have said; yes, but, more wonderful still, in ages past I cannot say how many a race, intellectually superior to the Indian, dwelt here.
It is a constant attendant upon the caravans or travelling-parties that cross prairie-land. A pack of prairie-wolves will follow such a party for hundreds of miles, in order to secure the refuse left at the camps.
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