But we see him looking off toward plateaus "looming as if [they
were] a distant shore." Another picture I shall always keep from his
report is of his stolid half-breed guide (who usually waited for him and
his companion with face toward them) sitting one day somewhat ahead of the
party on a slight elevation, which makes the watershed between the rivers
of the north and the rivers of the south, his face turned from them,
gazing in silent rapture upon the boundless stretch of plains.
How their magical influence possessed him, as well as that child of forest
and plain, Nicollet, a peasant boy of Savoy, a professor in Paris,
interrupts his topographical report to tell: "It is difficult to express
by words the varied impressions which the spectacle of these prairies
produces. Their sight never wearies. To look a prairie up or down, to
ascend one of its undulations, to reach a small plateau (or, as the
voyageurs call it, a prairie planche), moving from wave to wave over
alternate swells and depressions and finally to reach the vast,
interminable low prairie that extends itself in front--(be it for hours,
days or weeks)--one never tires; pleasurable and exhilarating sensations
are all the time felt; ennui is never experienced.
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