THE PLAINS OF NEBRASKA
It had thundered on the Friday night, but the sun rose on Saturday
without a cloud. We were at sea - there is no other adequate
expression - on the plains of Nebraska. I made my observatory on
the top of a fruit-waggon, and sat by the hour upon that perch to
spy about me, and to spy in vain for something new. It was a world
almost without a feature; an empty sky, an empty earth; front and
back, the line of railway stretched from horizon to horizon, like a
cue across a billiard-board; on either hand, the green plain ran
till it touched the skirts of heaven. Along the track innumerable
wild sunflowers, no bigger than a crown-piece, bloomed in a
continuous flower-bed; grazing beasts were seen upon the prairie at
all degrees of distance and diminution; and now and again we might
perceive a few dots beside the railroad which grew more and more
distinct as we drew nearer till they turned into wooden cabins, and
then dwindled and dwindled in our wake until they melted into their
surroundings, and we were once more alone upon the billiard-board.
The train toiled over this infinity like a snail; and being the one
thing moving, it was wonderful what huge proportions it began to
assume in our regard. It seemed miles in length, and either end of
it within but a step of the horizon. Even my own body or my own
head seemed a great thing in that emptiness. I note the feeling
the more readily as it is the contrary of what I have read of in
the experience of others. Day and night, above the roar of the
train, our ears were kept busy with the incessant chirp of
grasshoppers - a noise like the winding up of countless clocks and
watches, which began after a while to seem proper to that land.
To one hurrying through by steam there was a certain exhilaration
in this spacious vacancy, this greatness of the air, this discovery
of the whole arch of heaven, this straight, unbroken, prison-line
of the horizon. Yet one could not but reflect upon the weariness
of those who passed by there in old days, at the foot's pace of
oxen, painfully urging their teams, and with no landmark but that
unattainable evening sun for which they steered, and which daily
fled them by an equal stride. They had nothing, it would seem, to
overtake; nothing by which to reckon their advance; no sight for
repose or for encouragement; but stage after stage, only the dead
green waste under foot, and the mocking, fugitive horizon. But the
eye, as I have been told, found differences even here; and at the
worst the emigrant came, by perseverance, to the end of his toil.
It is the settlers, after all, at whom we have a right to marvel.
Our consciousness, by which we live, is itself but the creature of
variety. Upon what food does it subsist in such a land? What
livelihood can repay a human creature for a life spent in this huge
sameness? He is cut off from books, from news, from company, from
all that can relieve existence but the prosecution of his affairs.
A sky full of stars is the most varied spectacle that he can hope.
He may walk five miles and see nothing; ten, and it is as though he
had not moved; twenty, and still he is in the midst of the same
great level, and has approached no nearer to the one object within
view, the flat horizon which keeps pace with his advance. We are
full at home of the question of agreeable wall-papers, and wise
people are of opinion that the temper may be quieted by sedative
surroundings. But what is to be said of the Nebraskan settler?
His is a wall-paper with a vengeance - one quarter of the universe
laid bare in all its gauntness.
His eye must embrace at every glance the whole seeming concave of
the visible world; it quails before so vast an outlook, it is
tortured by distance; yet there is no rest or shelter till the man
runs into his cabin, and can repose his sight upon things near at
hand. Hence, I am told, a sickness of the vision peculiar to these
empty plains.
Yet perhaps with sunflowers and cicadae, summer and winter, cattle,
wife and family, the settler may create a full and various
existence. One person at least I saw upon the plains who seemed in
every way superior to her lot. This was a woman who boarded us at
a way station, selling milk. She was largely formed; her features
were more than comely; she had that great rarity - a fine
complexion which became her; and her eyes were kind, dark, and
steady. She sold milk with patriarchal grace. There was not a
line in her countenance, not a note in her soft and sleepy voice,
but spoke of an entire contentment with her life. It would have
been fatuous arrogance to pity such a woman. Yet the place where
she lived was to me almost ghastly. Less than a dozen wooden
houses, all of a shape and all nearly of a size, stood planted
along the railway lines. Each stood apart in its own lot. Each
opened direct off the billiard-board, as if it were a billiard-
board indeed, and these only models that had been set down upon it
ready made. Her own, into which I looked, was clean but very
empty, and showed nothing homelike but the burning fire. This
extreme newness, above all in so naked and flat a country, gives a
strong impression of artificiality. With none of the litter and
discoloration of human life; with the paths unworn, and the houses
still sweating from the axe, such a settlement as this seems purely
scenic. The mind is loth to accept it for a piece of reality; and
it seems incredible that life can go on with so few properties, or
the great child, man, find entertainment in so bare a playroom.
And truly it is as yet an incomplete society in some points; or at
least it contained, as I passed through, one person incompletely
civilised. At North Platte, where we supped that evening, one man
asked another to pass the milk-jug. This other was well-dressed
and of what we should call a respectable appearance; a darkish man,
high spoken, eating as though he had some usage of society; but he
turned upon the first speaker with extraordinary vehemence of tone
-
"There's a waiter here!" he cried.
"I only asked you to pass the milk," explained the first.
Here is the retort verbatim -
"Pass! Hell! I'm not paid for that business; the waiter's paid
for it. You should use civility at table, and, by God, I'll show
you how!"
The other man very wisely made no answer, and the bully went on
with his supper as though nothing had occurred. It pleases me to
think that some day soon he will meet with one of his own kidney;
and that perhaps both may fall.
