p28  Chapter V

"The scenery on the Rhine, with its castellated heights, has furnished many of the favorite subjects for the artist's pencil, and been the admiration of European travellers for centuries. Yet it is doubtful whether, in actual beauty of landscape, it is not equalled by that of some of  p29 the streams that water this region of the Far West. It is certain that, though the rock formations essentially differ, Nature has here fashioned, on an extensive scale, and in advance of all civilization, remarkable and curious counterparts to the artificial landscape which has given celebrity to that part of the European Continent.

"The features of the scenery are not, indeed, of the loftiest and most impressive character — such as one might expect to witness on approaching the source of one of the two largest rivers on the globe. There are no elevated peaks, rising in majestic grandeur; no mountain torrents, shrouded in foam, and chafing in their rocky channels; no deep and narrow valleys, hemmed in on every side, and forming, as it were, a little world of their own; no narrow and precipitous passes, winding through circuitous defiles; no cavernous gorges, giving exit to pent-up waters; no contorted and twisted strata, affording evidence of gigantic and violent throes. But the features of the scene, though less grave and bold than those of mountainous regions, are yet impressive and strongly marked. We find the luxuriant sward, clothing the hill-slope even down to the water's edge. We have the steep cliff, shooting up through its mural escarpments. We have the stream, clear as crystal, now quiet, and smooth, and glassy, then ruffled by a temporary rapid; or, when a terrace of rock abruptly crosses it, broken up into a small, romantic cascade. We have clumps of trees, disposed with an effect that might baffle the landscape gardener; and crowning the grassy height, now dotting the green slope with partial and isolated shade. From the  p30 hill-tops, the intervening valleys wear the aspect of cultivated meadows and rich pasture-grounds, irrigated by frequent rivulets, that wend their way through fields of wild hay fringed with flourishing willows. Here and there, occupying its nook on the bank of the stream, at some favorable spot, occurs the solitary wigwam, with its scanty appurtenances. On the summit-level spreads the wide prairie, decked with flowers of the gayest hue; its long, undulating waves, stretching away till sky and meadow mingle in the distant horizon. The whole combination suggests the idea, not of an aboriginal wilderness (so recently), inhabited by savage tribes, but of a country lately under a high state of cultivation, and suddenly deserted by its inhabitants — their dwellings, indeed, gone, but the castle-homes of their chieftains only partially destroyed, and showing, in ruins, on the rocky summits around. This latter feature, especially, aids the delusion; for the peculiar aspect of the exposed limestone, and its manner of weathering, cause it to assume a semblance somewhat fantastic, indeed, but yet wonderfully close and faithful to the dilapidated wall, with its crowning parapet, and its projecting buttresses, and its flanking towers, and even the lesser details that mark the fortress of the olden time."

"The rural beauty of this portion of Iowa can hardly be surpassed. Undulating prairies, interspersed with open groves of timber, and watered with pebbly or rocky-bedded streams, pure and transparent; hills of moderate height and gentle slope; here and there, especially towards the heads of streams, small lakes, as clear as the rivers, some  p31 skirted with timber, some with banks formed by the greensward of the open prairie. These are the ordinary features of the pastoral landscape."