The Abilene-bound coach arrived the next day, as expected, and soon Isaac found himself skimming over a sea of wildflowers. Cartographers of the day called this the Great American Desert, but to Isaac it seemed they had gotten it wrong, for here was “a carpet of flowers such as words will not describe. The flowers rolled in the wind like varicolored waves.” Flowers north, south, east, and west—“the most beautiful vision in nature my eyes have ever beheld.”
