A fierce wind was sweeping over the boundless land, with showers in its train.

The signs of habitation became scantier, the farms fewer.

Bunches of horses and herds of cattle widely scattered over the endless grassy plains--the brown lines of the ploughed fire-guards running beside the railway--the bents of winter grass, white in the storm-light, bleaching the rolling surface of the ground, till the darkness of some cloud-shadow absorbed them; these things breathed--of a sudden--wildness and desolation.

It seemed as though man could no longer cope with the mere vastness of the earth--an earth without rivers or trees, too visibly naked and measureless.
"At last I am afraid of it!" said Elizabeth, shivering in her fur coat, with a little motion of her hand toward the plain.

"And what must it be in winter!" Anderson laughed.
"The winter is much milder here than in Manitoba! Radiant sunshine day after day--and the warm chinook-wind.