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At a distance of about sixty miles from Omaha, on the second night of my journeying through the Prairie, I saw it on fire. It was on the right hand side to me going Westward, & did not reach up to the rails within a mile or two. The front of the fire as we passed along it was five or six miles long. The flames had not a uniform appearance. In slight depressions, where moisture hung longer, & therefore the grass & prairie plants were thick & high, the flames rose about fifteen feet, but where the blazing had subsided, the smouldering remains of plant that had more substance than the rest appeared like rows of stars. There was smoke visible only where there was much flame, & the lazy masses of the smoke were illuminated by the glare of the flames beneath. unclear in one place there was something burning above the general level we supposed that it was the dwelling house of some Prairie settler that was being destroyed.

I also curing four days saw the pine & poplar Forest on the Mountain above the town of Boulder, on fire. I was not to near to this as I had been to the Prairie, but it did not strike me, judging however from a distance, that it's effects were grander. There seemed a great deal more smoke than flames, which streamed off down the wind like large bodies of cloud. I heard however that sometimes the appearance of this Forest burning on the Mountains was very grand. I observed wherever I penetrated into the Rocky Mountains that a great part of the wood had been destroyed in