Thus, gradually, we are entering the prairie country, which extends as far west as the Grand Coteau of the Missouri. This prairie region is covered with a rich growth of grass; the soil is extremely fertile, and capable of producing a variety of cereals. Over the greater portion of the prairie country, indeed, forests of aspens would grow, did not annual fires in most parts arrest their progress. Here and there numbers have sprung up. The true prairie region in the United States extends over the eastern part of Ohio, Indiana, the southern portion of Michigan, the southern part of Wisconsin, nearly the whole of the states of Illinois and Iowa, and the northern portion of Missouri, gradually passing--in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska--into that arid and desert region known as The Plains, which lie at the base of the Rocky Mountains. The Grand Coteau de Missouri forms a natural boundary to these arid plains. This vast table-land rises to the height of from 400 to 800 feet above the Missouri. Vegetation is very scanty; the Indian turnip, however, is common, as is also a species of cactus. No tree or shrub is seen; and only in the bottoms or in marshes is a rank herbage found. Across these desert regions the trails of the emigrant bands passing to the Far West have often been marked: first, in the east, by furniture and goods abandoned; further west, by the waggons and carts of the ill-starred travellers; then by the bones of oxen and horses bleaching on the plain; and, finally, by the graves, and sometimes the unburied bodies, of the emigrants themselves, the survivors having been compelled to push onwards with the remnant of their cattle to a more fertile region, where provender and water could be procured to restore their well-nigh exhausted strength. Oftentimes they have been attacked by bands of mounted Indians, whose war-whoop has startled them from their slumbers at night; and they have been compelled to fight their way onwards, day after day assailed by their savage and persevering foes. Civilised man is, however, triumphant at last, and the steam-engine, on its iron path, now traverses that wild region from east to west at rapid speed; and the red men, who claim to be lords of the soil, have been driven back into the more remote wilderness, or compelled to succumb to the superior power of the invader, in many instances being utterly exterminated. Still, north and south of that iron line the country resembles a desert; and the wild Indian roams as of yore, like the Arab of the East--his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him.