Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Contributed by American Museum of Natural History Library.
| www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
or sandpipers. At times also, a large
hawk will come into view circling
up & up until it becomes a mere
spark in the intense blue of the
sky above. It is a beautiful sight to
see the prairies, rich in changing
tones of brown & green stretching
away for each side of the train,
as dotted here & there by herds of
cattle, or perhaps a flock of sheep.
It takes but a slight amount of
imagination to believe that they are
the last remains of the great herds
of buffalos which once roamed these
very prairies. In most places,
not a tree is in sight, the long reaches
of prairie being broken only by fences
for a settler's cabin.
I just saw two Bitterns, probably Botaurus
lignipes over fly up from a little marsh
to a great flock of dark birds which
seemed to be Corvids.
6 P.M. Since about two o'clock this
afternoon we have been passing thru
the bad-lands of N. Dakota & Montana.
The scenery of course changed radically
as soon as we struck this section
of the country. At first only single
conical "buttes" would rise from