Read it through once

The great Steppes of Southern Russia and the pastures that extend far to the eastward even to the very borders of China, the Prairies of North America, the Pampas of Argentina, the great sheep-farms of Australia, and a large proportion of South Africa, consist of wide, treeless, grassy plains, where forests only occur along the banks of rivers, in narrow hill-valleys, or upon mountains of considerable altitude. Upon these great plateaux or undulating hills the rainfall, though it is but small in amount, is equally distributed, so that there is no lengthy and arid dry season. Take the American Prairie, for instance. These valuable lands, once the home of unnumbered bison and hordes of antelopes, lie between the ancient forests of the eastern states and the half-deserts and true salt deserts of the extreme west. Rivers, accompanied in their windings by riverside forests, are found (especially in the east). The real prairie has a blackish, loamy soil, covered sometimes by the rich Buffalo or Mesquite grass, which forms a short, velvety covering, not exactly a turf such as we find in England, but still true grassland. It is only green in early spring.