All is as level as the sea, and the compass was our surest, as well as principal guide. In view of this passage, as well as that of many other dry stretches upon the route, the traveller should be apprised of the necessity of providing a water-cask holding at least five gallons to each wagon, in which a supply for drinking and cooking may be carried along to serve in cases of emergency.
Birdwatcher
Yes, indeed. It's something to see these great flatlands. I grew up on the Southern Alberta and Saskatchewan prairies, which can be flat here and there, but there is nothing I've seen anywhere to compare to the Llano Estecado.
This past weekend my wife and I drove up to Lubbock to meet two of her sons, who were on the way to a wedding. The drive from Big Springs on north is about as flat an 80-mile stretch of land as you can find, and it continues just as flat north from Lubbock almost all the way to Amarillo without so much as a hillock and only the rarest of gullies. As we drove we talked about how it must have appeared 160 years ago, and we tried to imagine all the farms out of our minds' eyes and replace them with an unending sea of grass... it wasn't hard to do, really. It's mostly flat grassland and cropland today anyway!
I find it lovely beyond compare, having grown up on such lands... but I can imagine the disquiet it must have put into the hearts of people whose life experience had always included hills and/or trees...
