Butterflies flit
noiselessly among them, and mocking-birds sing loud in the leafy
screens above. A red-headed woodpecker taps upon a resounding tree and
screams in exultation as he seizes his prey.
We skirted Viola Lake, cresting the high hill, and descending to a
shaded valley where the lapping waters plashed upon the roadside: then
mounted another hill, among thick clustering oaks and giant pines, to
where three lakes are seen spreading broadly out upon a grassy plain
between high wooded slopes. And these are Ekoniah! Twenty years ago a
tiny rivulet, wandering through broad prairies; eight years later a
wider stream, already beginning to encroach upon the grassy borderland;
now a chain of ever-broadening lakes, already drawing near to the hills
which frame in the widespread plain. Famous grazing-lands these were
once, the favored haunts of cattle-drovers, more famous hunting-grounds
in older days, before firm prairie had given place to watery savanna.
There were Indian villages upon the heights above and bloody battles in
the plains below. But who shall tell the story of those days? The
Indians are gone; the cattle-drovers have followed them to the far
South; the new settler of twenty years ago cared nothing for
antiquities or for the legends of an older time.
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