At the base of the hills lay the city, a dirty mass of bricks and smoke and dust, and at its far edge flowed the river,--deep here, tinted with green, writhing and gurgling and curdling on the banks over shelving ledges of lichen and mud-covered rock.

Beyond it yawned the opening to the great West,--the Prairies.

Not the dreary deadness here, as farther west.

A plain, dark russet in hue,--for the grass was sun-scorched,--stretching away into the vague distance, intolerable, silent, broken by hillocks and puny streams that only made the vastness and silence more wide and heavy.

Its limitless torpor weighed on the brain; the eyes ached, stretching to find some break before the dull russet faded into the amber of the horizon and was lost.