When the first European explorers crossed the middle of the North American continent they were met with an awesome expanse of grassland. They didn't even have a word for it - the French, in a characteristically dismissive vein, described it as a meadow. The English were apparently more awed; they adopted the romance of the French language, if not its literal meaning, and called it a "prairie." Later, one of the early settlers wrote, in 1841, that "for miles the prairie gently sloped, hardly presenting a bush to relieve the eye. In the distance, the green skirting of woods, which fringed either border of a large stream, softened down the view. Occasionally a deer would jump suddenly from his noonday rest, and scamper off..."