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We have already seen how the coming of the ice-sheet benefited the regions on the borders of the old Laurentian highland. This same benefit extended over practically the whole of what are now the prairies. Before the advent of the ice the whole section consisted of a broadly banded coastal plain much older than that of the Atlantic coast.
A raid on some English post or village had far more attraction than following the plough or threshing the grain. This adventurous spirit led the young Frenchman to the western prairies where the Red and Assiniboine waters mingle, to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains, to the Ohio and Mississippi, and to the Gulf of Mexico.
The call of the Church in the West has not been heard. Never has the importance of the West loomed up before the public mind as it has since the beginning of the war. To realize this you have only to remark its growing influence in our political life. It cannot be otherwise; the possibilities of the West are so great and so numerous. Immense virgin prairies are still waiting for the plough.
The nearest house down the gulf was about eighty miles off, and behind us lay the virgin forests, with swamps, lakes, prairies, and mountains, stretching away without break right across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. The outpost which, in virtue of a ship's carronade and a flagstaff, was occasionally styled a "fort" consisted of four wooden buildings.
Such men as the Grants, Findlays, Lapointes, Bellegardes, and Falcons were equally skilled in managing the swift canoe, or scouring the plains on the Indian ponies. We shall see the part which this new element were to play in the social life and even in the public concerns of the prairies.
These figures were hidden from the horses by a swell of the prairies, and, as in the case of the cougar, the wind blew their odor away. "Indians?" asked Paul. "I can't tell at this distance," replied Henry, "but it's more likely that they belong to the party of Alvarez, and perhaps they know that wild horses frequent this prairie and others hereabouts. See what they are doing!"
The Indians have a tradition that a vast serpent once lived in the waters of the Mississippi, and that, taking a freak to visit the Great Lakes, he left his trail through the prairies, which, collecting the waters from the meadows and the rains of heaven as they fell, at length became the Fox River.
Marengo sprang upon it as it came to the ground; but his master, leaping from his horse, scolded him off, and took up the game which was found to be quite dead. Lucien now remounted: and, as he rode out into the open ground, he could see Basil far off upon the prairies. He was going at full gallop; and the gobbler with outspread wings was seen some distance ahead of him, running like an ostrich!
God was caring for these little untaught children in that vast prairie pasture. In the Sod Cellar Almost without exception the homes on the prairies were provided with sod cellars. Even the few modern dwellings in the community in which John's uncle lived were not without these old-fashioned cellars, which served as a protection in times of storms and tornadoes.
The ground they select is generally in the interiors of the rich, hammocks which abound in the swamps and prairies of Southern Florida.
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