During The Leisure Moments Of The
Day, Or At The Commencement Of Night, When Seated At My Fire, All My
Thoughts Seemed Riveted To The Progress And Success Of My Journey, And To
The New Objects We Had Met With During The Day.
I had then to compel
myself to think of absent friends and past times, and the thought that
they supposed me dead or unsuccessful in my enterprize, brought me back
immediately to my favourite object.
Much, indeed the greater portion, of
my journey had been occupied in long reconnoitring rides; and he who is
thus occupied is in a continued state of excitement, now buoyant with
hope, as he urges on his horse towards some distant range or blue
mountain, or as he follows the favourable bend of a river; now all
despairing and miserable, as he approaches the foot of the range without
finding water from which he could start again with renewed strength, or
as the river turns in an unfavourable direction, and slips out of his
course. Evening approaches; the sun has sunk below the horizon for some
time, but still he strains his eye through the gloom for the dark verdure
of a creek, or strives to follow the arrow-like flight of a pigeon, the
flapping of whose wings has filled him with a sudden hope, from which he
relapses again into a still greater sadness; with a sickened heart he
drops his head to a broken and interrupted rest, whilst his horse is
standing hobbled at his side, unwilling from excessive thirst to feed on
the dry grass.
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