An uninhabited, moderately-rolling or nearly flat country,
wherein no ridges of stubborn rock gave protection to fire-repelling
marshes, would gradually be swept of trees by fires, and converted into
prairie or desert.
Life on the Plains--the life of white men, by courtesy termed
civilized--is a rough and rugged matter. I can not concur with J.B.
Ficklin, long a mail-agent ranging from St. Joseph to Salt Lake (now, I
regret to say, a quarter-master in the rebel army), who holds that a man
going on the Plains should never wash his face till he comes off again;
but water is used there for purposes of ablution with a frugality not
fully justified by its scarcity. A 'biled shirt' lasts a good while. I
noted some in use which the dry, fine dust of that region must have been
weeks in bringing to the rigidity and clayey yellow or tobacco-stain hue
which they unchangeably wore during the days that I enjoyed the society
of the wearers. Pilot-bread, a year or so baked, and ever since
subjected to the indurating influences of an atmosphere intensely dry,
is not particularly succulent or savory food, and I did not find it
improved by some minutes' immersion in the frying-pan of hot lard from
which our rations of pork had just been turned out; but others of more
experience liked it much.
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