Foothills. For nine hundred miles the prairies spread themselves
out in vast level reaches, and then begin to climb over softly
rounded mounds that ever grow higher and sharper, till here and
there, they break into jagged points and at last rest upon the great
bases of the mighty mountains. These rounded hills that join the
prairies to the mountains form the Foothill Country. They extend
for about a hundred miles only, but no other hundred miles of the
great West are so full of interest and romance. The natural features
of the country combine the beauties of prairie and of mountain
scenery. There are valleys so wide that the farther side melts into
the horizon, and uplands so vast as to suggest the unbroken prairie.
Nearer the mountains the valleys dip deep and ever deeper till they
narrow into canyons through which mountain torrents pour their
blue-gray waters from glaciers that lie glistening between the white
peaks far away.

--Connor: _The Sky Pilot_.

Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm;
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands;
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf
In cluster; then a molder'd church; and higher
A long street climbs to one tall tower'd mill;
And high in heaven behind it a gray down
With Danish barrows, and a hazelwood,
By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes
Green in a cuplike hollow of the down.

--Tennyson: _Enoch Arden_.

+Theme LXII.+--_Write a description of some valley, mountain, field,
woods, or prairie._

+Theme LXIII.+--_Write a description of some stream, pond, lake, dam, or
waterfall._

(Consider especially your choice of words.)

3. _Sounds or the use of sounds._

And the noise of Niagara? Alarming things have been said about it, but
they are not true. It is a great and mighty noise, but it is not, as
Hennepin thought, an "outrageous noise." It is not a roar. It does not
drown the voice or stun the ear. Even at the actual foot of the falls it
is not oppressive. It is much less rough than the sound of heavy surf--
steadier, more homogeneous, less metallic, very deep and strong, yet
mellow and soft; soft, I mean, in its quality. As to the noise of the
rapids, there is none more musical. It is neither rumbling nor sharp. It
is clear, plangent, silvery. It is so like the voice of a steep brook--
much magnified, but not made coarser or more harsh--that, after we have
known it, each liquid call from a forest hillside will seem, like the odor
of grapevines,