re restored to health by exposure which we should imagine
would kill a healthy man.

When George Flower rode westward in 1816, Lancaster, Pa., was the
largest inland town of the United States, and Dr. Priestley's beautiful
abode at Sunbury on the Susquehanna was still on the outside of the "Far
West." He had more trouble in getting to Pittsburg than he would now
have in going round the world. In the Alleghany Mountains he lost his
way, and was rescued by the chance of finding a stray horse which he
caught and mounted, and was carried by it to the only cabin in the
region. The owner of this cabin was "a poor Irishman with a coat so
darned, patched, and tattered as to be quite a curiosity."

"How I cherished him!" says the traveler. "No angel's visit could have
pleased me so well. He pointed out to me the course and showed me into a
path."

Pittsburg was already a smoky town. Leaving it soon, he rode on westward
to Cincinnati, then a place of five or six thousand inhabitants, but
growing rapidly. Even so far west as Cincinnati he could still learn
nothing of the prairies.

"Not a person that I saw," he declares, "knew anything about them. I
shrank from the idea of settling in the midst of a wood of heavy timber,
to hack and to hew my way to a little farm, ever bounded by a wall of
gloomy forest."

Then he rode across Kentucky, where he was struck, as every one was and
is, by the luxuriant beauty of the blue-grass farms. He dwells upon the
difficulty and horror of fording the rivers at that season of the year.
Some of his narrow escapes made such a deep impression upon his mind
that he used to dream of them fifty years after. He paid a visit to old
Governor Shelby of warlike renown, one of the heroes of the frontier,
and there at last he got some news of the prairies! He says:

"It was at Governor Shelby's house (in Lincoln County, Ky.) that I met
the first person who confirmed me in the existence of the prairies."

This informant was the Governor's brother, who had just come from the
Mississippi River across the glorious prairies of Illinois to the Ohio.
The information was a great relief. He was sure now that he had left his
native land on no fool's errand, the victim of a traveler's lying tale.
Being thus satisfied that there _were_ prairies which could be found
whenever they were wanted, he suspended the pursuit.

He had been then seven months from home, and November being at hand, too
late to explore an unkno