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.
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