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.

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