They may call stupendous mountains and grand rivers by the names of Smith and Jones, of Fremont and Stansbury; but men who think justly, and even the rude but wronged trappers themselves, will laugh to scorn such _scientific coxcombry_.
I honour the names which the trappers have given to the features of that far land; many of which, like the Indian nomenclature, are the expressions of nature itself; and not a few of them have been baptised by the blood of these brave pioneers.
We have said that our adventurers now travelled upon a "rolling prairie." The surface exhibited vast ridges with hollows between.

Did you ever see the ocean after a storm?
Do you know what a "ground-swell" is ?--when the sea is heaving up in great smooth ridges without crest or foam, and deep troughs between--when the tempest has ceased to howl and the winds to blow, yet still so uneven remains the surface of the mighty deep, still so dangerous are these smooth waves, that ships rock and tumble about, and sometimes lose their masts, or are flung upon their beam ends! That is what the sailors call a "swell." Now, if you could imagine one of these billowy seas to be suddenly arrested in its motion, and the water transformed to solid earth, and covered with a green sward, you would have something not unlike a "rolling prairie." Some think that, when these prairies were formed, some such rolling motion actually existed, by means of an earthquake, and that all at once the ground ceased its undulations, and stood still! It is an interesting speculation for the learned geologist.
The ridges of the prairie, upon which our adventurers were journeying, extended from east to west, and, of course, the valleys trended in the same direction.

The route was northward; the path, therefore, which the travellers pursued was a continued succession of ups and downs.
Eagerly looking before them, anxiously scanning the valleys or troughs of the prairie as they surmounted each new swell, they rode onward full of hope that they would soon come in sight of the buffaloes.

But they were not prepared for the sight was so soon to greet their eyes--a sight which one would have supposed would have filled them with joy, but which, on the contrary, had the effect of inspiring them with a feeling akin to terror.
They had just climbed one of the ridges that gave them a view of the valley beyond.

It was a small deep valley, of nearly a circular form, and covered with a green turf.