To the right of the Mississippi these savannahs are sometimes rolling, but oftener level, and interminable as the ocean, covered with long rank grass of tender green, blended with flowers chiefly of the liliaceous kind, which fill the air with their fragrance. In the southern districts they are sometimes interspersed with groups of magnolia, tulip, and cotton trees; and in the north with oak and black walnut. These are rare occurrences, as the prairies may be traversed for many days without finding a shrub, except on the banks of the streams, which are beautifully fringed with myrtles, azaleas, kalmias, andromedas, and rhododendrons. On the wide plains the only objects to be seen are countless herds of wild horses, bison, and deer. The country assumes a more severe aspect in higher latitudes. It is still capable of producing rye and barley in the territories of the Assinaiboia Indians, and round Lake Winnepeg there are great forests; a low vegetation with grass follows, and towards the Icy Ocean the land is barren and covered with numerous lakes. East of the Mississippi there is a magnificent undulating country about 300 miles broad, extending 1000 miles from south to north between that great river and the Alleghany mountains, mostly covered with trees. When America was discovered, one uninterrupted forest spread over the country, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Canadian lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic Ocean it crossed the Alleghany mountains, descended into the valley of the Mississippi on the north, but on the south it crossed the main stream of that river altogether, forming an ocean of vegetation of more than 1,000,000 of square miles, of which the greater part still remains. Although forests occupy so much of the country, there are immense prairies on the east side of the river also. Pine barrens, stretching far into the interior, occupy the whole coast of the Mexican Gulf eastward from the Pearl River, through Alabama and a great part of Florida. These vast monotonous tracts of sand, covered with forests of gigantic pine-trees, are as peculiarly a distinctive feature of the continent of North America as the prairies, and are not confined to this part of the United States; they occur to a great extent in North Carolina, Virginia, and elsewhere. Tennessee and Kentucky, though much cleared, still possess large forests, and the Ohio flows for hundreds of miles among magnificent trees, with an undergrowth of azaleas, rhododendrons, and other beautiful shrubs, matted together by creeping plants. There the American forests appear in all their glory: the gigantic deciduous cypress, and the tall tulip-tree, overtopping the forest by half its height, a variety of noble oaks, black walnuts, American plane, hickory, sugar-maple, and the lireodendron, the most splendid of the magnolia tribe, the pride of the forest.