My Host Was Particularly Unfortunate In His Allotment.
The Great Spirit had told him in a dream that he must sing a certain
song in the middle
Of every night; and regularly at about twelve
o'clock his dismal monotonous chanting would awaken me, and I would
see him seated bolt upright on his couch, going through his dolorous
performances with a most business-like air. There were other voices
of the night still more inharmonious. Twice or thrice, between
sunset and dawn, all the dogs in the village, and there were hundreds
of them, would bay and yelp in chorus; a most horrible clamor,
resembling no sound that I have ever heard, except perhaps the
frightful howling of wolves that we used sometimes to hear long
afterward when descending the Arkansas on the trail of General
Kearny's army. The canine uproar is, if possible, more discordant
than that of the wolves. Heard at a distance, slowly rising on the
night, it has a strange unearthly effect, and would fearfully haunt
the dreams of a nervous man; but when you are sleeping in the midst
of it the din is outrageous. One long loud howl from the next lodge
perhaps begins it, and voice after voice takes up the sound till it
passes around the whole circumference of the village, and the air is
filled with confused and discordant cries, at once fierce and
mournful. It lasts but for a moment and then dies away into silence.
Morning came, and Kongra-Tonga, mounting his horse, rode out with the
hunters.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 291 of 486
Words from 77444 to 77702
of 129303
