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1Author:  Thorpe Thomas Bangs 1815-1878Add
 Title:  The mysteries of the backwoods, or, Sketches of the Southwest  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: We have wandered over the Louisiana prairies, our little pony, like an adventurous bark, seemingly trusting itself imprudently beyond the headlands, a mere speck, moving among the luxuriant islands of live oak that here and there sit so quietly upon the rolling waves of vegetation. Myriads of wild geese would often rise upon our intrusion, helping out the fancy of being at sea; but the bounding deer, or wild cattle, that occasionally resented our presence and rattled off at break-neck pace, kept us firmly on the land. In the spring seasons, the prairies are covered with the choicest flowers, that mix with the young grass in such profusion as to carpet them more delicately, and more richly, than in the seraglio of a sultan. Upon this vegetation innumerable cattle feed and fatten, until they look pampered, and their skins glisten like silk in the sun. Apparently wild as the buffalo, they are all marked and numbered, and in them consist the wealth of the inhabitant of the prairie. It is easy to imagine that herdsmen of such immense fields live a wild and free life; ever on horseback, like the Arabs, they have no fear save when out of the saddle, and nature has kindly provided a “steed” that boasts of no particular blood, that may be called the “yankee” of his kind, because it never tires, never loses its energy, and makes a living and grows fat, where all else of its species would starve.
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