When Night
Came I Sat Down By The Fire, Longing, With An Intensity Of Which At
This Moment I Can Hardly Conceive, For Some Powerful Stimulant.
In the morning as glorious a sun rose upon us as ever animated that
desolate wilderness.
We advanced and soon were surrounded by tall
bare hills, overspread from top to bottom with prickly-pears and
other cacti, that seemed like clinging reptiles. A plain, flat and
hard, and with scarcely the vestige of grass, lay before us, and a
line of tall misshapen trees bounded the onward view. There was no
sight or sound of man or beast, or any living thing, although behind
those trees was the long-looked-for place of rendezvous, where we
fondly hoped to have found the Indians congregated by thousands. We
looked and listened anxiously. We pushed forward with our best
speed, and forced our horses through the trees. There were copses of
some extent beyond, with a scanty stream creeping through their
midst; and as we pressed through the yielding branches, deer sprang
up to the right and left. At length we caught a glimpse of the
prairie beyond. Soon we emerged upon it, and saw, not a plain
covered with encampments and swarming with life, but a vast unbroken
desert stretching away before us league upon league, without a bush
or a tree or anything that had life. We drew rein and gave to the
winds our sentiments concerning the whole aboriginal race of America.
Our journey was in vain and much worse than in vain.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 206 of 486
Words from 54929 to 55188
of 129303
