freshets come; the woodchuck in his long, long sleep, and the chipmunk
with his winter store of food. And so watching, listening, and musing
you come at length to the western edge of the woodland and look across
the prairie, far as the eye can reach, to where the red ball of the
sun hangs scarce a yard above the horizon. You look upon a scene which
is peculiar to this part of Iowa alone. It is not found in any other
state or nation on earth. "These are the gardens of the desert, for
which the speech of England has no name--the Prairies."

_"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, forever."_

The "rounded billows fixed" are the paha ridges which the glaciers
made. They are not high enough to obstruct the view, nor to mar its
ocean-like effect. In the middle distance you may see a farm windmill
from sail to platform, but away across the snow-plain sea you catch
only the uppermost part of the white sails. The rest is concealed from
view by the illusory rise of the foreground toward the horizon--for
this twenty-mile stretch of prairie has an illusory curve similar to
that seen from all ocean shores. But now the sun has disappeared and
the windmills, houses, groves, and fences which looked like black
etchings against the flame-colored sky slowly vanish, first far away
toward the bluffs on the yon shore of the prairie sea, then nearer,
nearer, comes the gloom until the fence across the first field is
scarcely discernible. The bright vermilion fades at length to misty
gray and lights appear in the windows of the farm homes.

* * * * *

This sunset and twilight scene, peculiar to Iowa, is succeeded by the
pageant of the stars. These are not peculiar, in neighboring
latitudes, to any clime or time. They are the same stars which sang
together when the foundations of the earth were fastened; the same
calm stars upon which Adam gazed in remorse, the night he was driven
from the garden of Eden. The Chinese, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians,
the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans counted the hours of the night by
the revolutions of the Greater and the Lesser Bear around Polaris, and
guided their crafts and caravans by that sure star's light:

_"And therefore bards of old,
Sages and hermits of the solemn wood,
Did in thy beams behold
That bright eterna