les one of the
immeasurable steppes of Asia, has not inaptly been termed "the great
American desert." It spreads forth into undulating and treeless plains,
and desolate sandy wastes wearisome to the eye from their extent and
monotony, and which are supposed by geologists to have formed the
ancient floor of the ocean, countless ages since, when its primeval
waves beat against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains.

It is a land where no man permanently abides; for, in certain seasons
of the year there is no food either for the hunter or his steed. The
herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and streams are dried
up; the buffalo, the elk and the deer have wandered to distant parts,
keeping within the verge of expiring verdure, and leaving behind them
a vast uninhabited solitude, seamed by ravines, the beds of former
torrents, but now serving only to tantalize and increase the thirst of
the traveller.

Occasionally the monotony of this vast wilderness is interrupted by
mountainous belts of sand and limestone, broken into confused masses;
with precipitous cliffs and yawning ravines, looking like the ruins of
a world; or is traversed by lofty and barren ridges of rock, almost
impassable, like those denominated the Black Hills. Beyond these rise
the stern barriers of the Rocky Mountains, the limits, as it were, of
the Atlantic world. The rugged defiles and deep valleys of this vast
chain form sheltering places for restless and ferocious bands of
savages, many of them the remnants of tribes, once inhabitants of the
prairies, but broken up by war and violence, and who carry into their
mountain haunts the fierce passions and reckless habits of desperadoes.

Such is the nature of this immense wilderness of the far West; which
apparently defies cultivation, and the habitation of civilized life.
Some portions of it along the rivers may partially be subdued by
agriculture, others may form vast pastoral tracts, like those of the
East; but it is to be feared that a great part of it will form a lawless
interval between the abodes of civilized man, like the wastes of the
ocean or the deserts of Arabia; and, like them, be subject to the
depredations of the marauder. Here may spring up new and mongrel races,
like new formations in geology, the amalgamation of the "debris" and
"abrasions" of former races, civilized and savage; the remains of broken
and almost extinguished tribes; the descendants of wandering hunters
and trappers;