The tiger lily, the sweet Williams, the pinks, together with the luxuriant meadows and the bobolinks, were left behind.

In their stead, a limitless, upward shelving plain outspread, covered with a short, surly, hairlike grass and certain sturdy, resinous plants supporting flowers of an unpleasant odor, sticky and weedy.

Bristling cacti bulged from the sod; small Quaker-gray sparrows and larks were the only birds.

In the swales blue joint grew rank.

The only trees were cottonwoods and cutleaf willow, scattered scantily along the elbows in the river.
At last they came to the home of the prairie dog and the antelope--the buffalo could not be far away! So wide was the earth, so all-embracing the sky, they seemed to blend at the horizon line, and lakes of water sprang into view, filling a swale in the sod--mystic and beautiful, only to vanish like cloud shadows.
The cattle country was soon at hand.