Maumee City express. [volume] (Maumee City, Ohio) 1838-184?, 1839-01-26

Biting features Of all in common, of no one in
particular. Who would institute comparison
between the dark-rolling luxuriance of the
North American prairie, and the gloomy moor
of Northern Europe, with its heavy, funeral
mantle ofheather and ling. Could the rifest
fancy conjure up the ceird sisters, all $50
withered and so wild in their attire," upon the
beautiful plans ofthe departed Ilini! Nor do
we meet in the thyme-breathIng downs Of
"merry England" the dread rich levels of
France, the grapc-clad highlands of Spain, erin
the golden mellowness of the Italian Cdmpdg-
ma, with a similitude of features sufficiently
striking to identify our own glorious prairies
with them. Europe can boast, indeed, no pc
cuiarity of surface, assuming like con6gura-
tion or exhibiting like phenomena.
When, then. we reflect, that of all those
plains which spread out themselves upon our
globe, the North American prairie possesses
characteristics peculiar toi itself, and to be met
with nowhere beside: when weconsiderthe de-
monstrations Of a soil of origin incontestably
diluvial; when we wander over the heaving,
billowy surface, and behold it strewed with
the rocky offspring Of another region, ,and, ttin-
tervals, encased in the saline crust ofthe ocean
sediment, when we dive into his fathomless
bosom, and bring forth the crumbling relics
of man and animal from sepulchers into which
for untold cycles, they have been entombed;
and when we liDger along those rolling streams
by which they are intersecteG, and behold upon
their banks the mighty indications Of whirling,
subsding floods, and behodburied in the heart
of the everlasting rock productions only of the
sea; the conviction is forced upon US, almost re.
sistlessly, that here the broad ocean once hea-
| ved and roared. To what circumstance, IN.
deed, but revolution of nature like this, are
we to refer that uniform deposition of earthly
strata upon the alluvial bottom-land of every
stream2 to what those deep-cut race-paths
which the great streams have, in the lapse ol
centuries, worn for themselves in the everast-
ing rock, hundreds of feet? to what those vast
salt-plains of Arkansas? those rocky heaps Of
the same mineral on the Missouri, or those
huge isolated masses of limestone, rearing
themselves amid the lonely grandeur, wonder
to the savage? Or to what else shal! we refer
those collections Of enormous seashells, heaped
upon the soil, or thrown up to its surface from
depth of fifty feet? ~
Many phenomena in the Valley of the Mis-.
sissipp concur to confirm the idea that its
vast delta plains, when first forsaken by the wa
ters of the ocean, were possessed by extensive
cane-brakes, covering, indeed, its entire sur
face. If, then, we suppose the Indians, who
passed from Asia to America in the early GEN.
turies of the Christian Era, to have commen-
ced the fires in autumn when the reed was like
tinder, and the conhagration would sweep our
boundless regions, we at once have an hypothe-
sis which accounts for the origin Of the prai-
res. 1t is at least as plausible as some others.
The occasions the autumnal fires must have
been various. The cane-forests must have
presented an insurmountabe obstacle in travel
ing, hunting, agriculture, or even residence
while the friction caused by the tempestuous
winds of autumn may have kindled among the
dry reeds.
The surface peculiar to the prairie is first
perceived in the State of Ohio. AS we pro-
ceed north and west it increases in extent,
until, few hundred miles beyond the Misss-
sippi, it rolls on towards the setting sun, in all
the majesty and magnifcence of boundless-
ness, to the base ofthe Rocky Mountains.