— 1—
Through the vast flat land the Creator’s finger had carved a crooked furrow and in this furrow flowed the river, carrying the vessel of the immigrants. The shores of the waterway lay close to them, just beyond the boat’s rail. The solid earth on either side gave the travelers a feeling of security. Fear for their lives, their constant companion on the ocean voyage, was no longer with them; they traveled on water, yet they were near land.
But their sense of being lost, astray in the world, remained with them on this river journey as it had during the ocean voyage.
They were passing through a vast level country, an endless emptiness of open, grassy, flat land. No more here than on the ocean could their eyes find a point of focus: no trees, no groves, no hills, no glades, no mountains. They saw one sight only — stretches of wild grass, herbs, and flowers, fields of tussocks, hollows of grass, billows of grass, springing from the ground on all sides, rolling forth in infinity; the same green billows extended all the way to that narrow edge where the flat land flowed into the globe of heaven, all the way to where the eye could see no farther. Like the Atlantic Ocean, this treeless expanse seemed to them one region only; nothing under the sun separated one landscape from another. The grassy tussocks swayed and sank and came up again from the hollows; the tussocks were like billows, always the same, everywhere; when they had seen one, they had seen them all. This unchanging, monotonous expanse was called the prairie.
For seventy days they had traversed the Atlantic Ocean — a sea of water. Now they traveled across the North American prairie — a sea of grass.
Here blossomed a hay meadow, vast as a kingdom, yet here no cattle grazed. Here was hay to harvest in such abundance that all the barns in the world would not suffice to hold it; here a haymaker could go forth with his scythe and cut one straight swath, day after day, mile after mile; he could continue his straight swath the whole summer long, the meadow was so vast he need never turn. Here were blossoming fields and grazing lands, here abounded flowers and fodder. Here, spreading before them, the travelers saw a verdant ocean which they might have walked through dry-shod, which they might have traversed without a ship.
This was not the sterile sea with darkness in its depths, existing below the firmament before dry land was seen: this was a growing and yielding sea where crops had as yet never been harvested.
Over this sea, too, the winds wailed, sweeping through the grass, stirring waves that rolled on endlessly. The fierce wind fell upon the grass, flattened it with all its power, rolled over it, pressed it down, so that it lay there as slick as if it had been combed with a comb. But when the wind lost its force and the pressure slackened, the soft grass rose again, straightening its blades. The sea of grass lay there again — living, irrepressible, billowing back and forth in its eternal way, unchanged since the creation of the earth.
The immigrants had lived in woodland regions in Sweden, they were at home in forests, they were familiar with trees, bushes, and thicket paths, they were intimate with valleys, glades, ridges, and hills. In the woodlands at home they had easily recognized familiar landmarks to guide them. But in this sea of grass they could find nothing to notice and remember: no roads, no wheel tracks, no paths, no cairns. In whichever direction they looked, from the deck of the river steamer they could see only a wild, untrampled expanse, where nothing indicated that man had passed. Without a guide, a wanderer over these flat lands would be lost, swallowed up; how could he find his way when one mile was forever like another?
The peasants from the forest regions passed over the prairie and shrank from the land opening before their eyes in all its incomprehensible vastness. They desired nothing more than to till smooth, level ground, but this prairie was not what they wanted. There was something missing in this flat land: God had not finished His creation. He had made the ground and planted the grass and all the other growing herbage, but the trees were missing, the bushes, the hills, the valleys, the swales. Moreover, this grass sea was too immense; it frightened them. Anything stretching farther than their eyes could see aroused fear, loneliness, a feeling of desolation. They feared the sea of grass because they were unable to see its end, they feared it in the same way that they feared eternity.
The prairie stung their hearts with its might and emptiness. The grassland lay on this side of the horizon and it lay beyond, continuing into the invisible, encircling them on all sides; they wanted to shrink and hide within themselves in their helplessness; the farther the earth stretched, the smaller man seemed.
Here was fertile soil, offering itself to the plow, a ground of potent growth. Where the earth is green, there people can live and feed themselves. And the rivers and brooks had cut into the land and watered it with their flow. What more could a tiller wish? Yet, here they would not like to settle, not under the best conditions; this land was not what they were seeking.
Born in the forest, they would never feel at home on the prairie. They wanted all of God’s creation around their homes; they wanted trees which gave shade and coolness in summer, warmth and protection against winds in winter. Here was not a single tree to fell for house timber, hardly a shrub to cut for firewood. They wanted to live within timbered walls, to gather high piles of wood for fires in their stoves. Settlers on the prairie must dig holes in the earth and live the life of gophers, and when above ground they must bend their backs because of the unmerciful winds. The woodland peasants would languish from the monotony of the unvarying, desolate, empty endlessness which would surround their homes if they lived here. They would wither away from loneliness and the sense of loss. Delivered into the infinity of this sea of grass, they would perish, soul and body.
No, the prairie was not a suitable place for permanent settlement. From the deck of their moving steamer they looked out over this flat land, satisfied to pass through it; they thought of the prairie as a thoroughfare, another sea they must cross.
Their journey continued in the river furrow, and more great stretches of prairie opened up. The new country was showing its size to them, and the more they saw of its vastness and immensity, the smaller they felt themselves; more than ever before during this long journey they felt lost and strayed in the world.
— 2—
At night, darkness was upon the face of the deep, and on this sea of grass. The wind held its breath and died down. From the ground rose a surge like dying billows on a calm water. Grass and wild flowers were veiled by the cloak of darkness, the verdant ocean was hidden by night. In the firmament — stretched over the earth by the Creator on the Second Day, and called by Him Heaven — the stars shone with clear brilliance. The world down here was great, but the heavenly firmament and the lights up there were greater still — so it seemed when night descended with darkness over the land, comforting those who felt too small for the great earth.
One evening at dusk, they saw a bright light in the sky ahead of the steamer. Somewhere far away a fire was burning, reflecting its gold-red flames in the heavens. On the earth a fire was throwing its flames so high that it wove red stripes into the gray clouds all the way to the top of heaven: the sea of grass was afire.
Far into the night the immigrants stood and gazed at this fire, so brilliantly reflected in the firmament ahead of the steamer. A wall of fire and flames rose into the sky, and they could discern thick clouds of smoke spreading above their heads like the wings of a black bird of prey. The stars faded away behind this red-glowing heavenly wall. A fire was sweeping the prairie, devouring the grass, feeding on a sea of fuel.