 | CHAPTER V. The prairie |  |
5. CHAPTER V.
That once their shades and glories threw,
Have left, in yonder silent sky,
No vestige where they flew.”
Montgomery.
A stillness, as deep as that which marked the
gloomy wastes in their front, was observed by the
fugitives to distinguish the spot they had just abandoned.
Even the trapper lent his practised faculties, in
vain, to detect any of the well-known signs, which
might establish the important fact that hostilities had
actually commenced between the parties of Mahtoree
and Ishmael; but their horses carried them out of
the reach of sounds without the occurrence of the
smallest evidence of the sort. The old man, from
time to time, muttered his discontent, but manifested
the uneasiness he actually entertained in no other
manner, unless it might be in exhibiting a growing
anxiety to urge the animals to increase their speed.
He had pointed out in passing, that deserted swale
where the family of the squatter had encamped, the
night they were introduced to the reader, and afterwards
he maintained an ominous silence; ominous,
because his companions had already seen enough of
his character, to be convinced that the circumstances
must be critical indeed, which possessed the power
to disturb the well regulated tranquillity of the old
man's mind.
“Have we not done enough,” Middleton demanded,
in tenderness to the inability of Inez and
Ellen to endure so much fatigue, at the end of some
hours; “we have ridden hard, and have crossed a
wide tract of plain. It is time to seek a place of
rest.”
“You must seek it then in Heaven, if you find
yourselves unequal to a longer march,” murmured
the old trapper. “Had the Tetons and the squatter
come to blows, as any one might see in the natur' of
things they were bound to do, there would be time
to look about us, and to calculate not only the
chances but the comforts of the journey; but as the
case actually is, I should consider it certain death, or
endless captivity, to trust our eyes with sleep, until
our heads are fairly hid in some uncommon cover.”
“I know not,” returned the impatient youth, who
reflected more on the sufferings of the fragile being
he supported, than on the experience of his companion.
“I know not; we have ridden leagues, and
I can see no extraordinary signs of danger—if you
fear for yourself my good friend, believe me you are
wrong, for—”
“Your gran'ther, were he living and here,” interrupted
the old man, stretching forth a hand, and laying
a finger impressively on the arm of Middleton,
“would have spared those words. He had some
reason to think that, in the prime of my days, when
my eye was quicker than the hawk's, and my limbs
were as active as the legs of the fallow-deer, I never
clung too eagerly and fondly to life: then why should
I now feel such a childish affection for a thing that I
know to be vain, and the companion of pain and sorrow.
Let the Tetons do their worst; they will not
find a miserable and worn out trapper the loudest in
his complaints or his prayers.”
“Pardon me, my worthy, my inestimable friend,”
exclaimed the repentant young man, warmly grasping
the hand, which the other was in the act of withdrawing;
“I knew not what I said—or rather I
thought only of those whose tenderness we are most
bound to consider.”
“Enough. It is natur', and it is right. Therein
your grand'ther would have done the very same.
wet and dry, have rolled over my poor head, since
the time we worried it out together, among the Red
Hurons of the Lakes, back in those rugged mountains
of old York! and many a noble buck has since that
day fallen by my hand; ay, and many a thieving
Mingo, too! Tell me, lad, did the general, for general
I know he got to be, did he ever tell you of the
deer we took, that night the outlyers of the accursed
tribe drove us to the caves, on the island, and how
we feasted and drunk in security?”
“I have often heard him mention the smallest circumstance
of the night you mean; but—”
“And the singer; and his open throat; and his
shoutings in the fights!” continued the old man, laughing
most joyously at the strength of his own recollections.
“All—all—he forgot nothing, even to the most
trifling incident. Do you not—”
“What, did he tell you of the imp behind the log—
and of the miserable devil who went over the fall—or
of the wretch in the tree?”
“Of each and all, with every thing that concerned
them. I should think—”
“Ay,” continued the old man, in a voice, which
betrayed how powerfully his own faculties retained
the impression of the spectacle, “I have been a
dweller in forests and in the wilderness for threescore
and ten years, and if any can pretend to know the
world, or to have seen scary sights, it is myself! But
never, before nor since, have I seen human man in
such a state of mortal despair as that very savage;
and yet he scorned to speak, or to cry out, or to own
his forlorn condition! It is their gift, and nobly did he
maintain it!”
“Harkee, old trapper,” interrupted Paul, who,
content with the knowledge that his waist was grasped
by one of the pretty arms of Ellen, had hitherto
as delicate as a humming-bird's in the day; but they
are nothing worth boasting of by star-light. Is that
a sick buffaloe, crawling along in the bottom, there,
or is it one of the stray cattle of the savages?”
The whole party drew up, in order to examine the
object, which Paul had pointed out. During most
of the time, they had ridden in the little vales in
order to seek the protection of the shadows, but just
at that moment, they had ascended a roll of the prairie
in order to cross into the very bottom where this
unknown animal was now seen.
“Let us descend,” said Middleton; “be it a beast
or a man we are too strong to have any cause of
fear.”
“Now if the thing was not morally impossible,”
cried the trapper, who the reader must have already
discovered was not always exact in the use of qualifying
words, “if the thing was not morally impossible,
I should say, that was the man, who journeys in
search of reptiles and insects: our fellow traveller,
the Doctor.”
“Why impossible? did you not direct him to pursue
this course, in order to rejoin us?”
“Ay, but I did not tell him to make an ass outdo
the speed of a horse—you are right—you are right,”
said the trapper, interrupting himself, as by gradually
lessening the distance between them, his eyes assured
him it was Obed and Asinus, whom he saw; “you
are right, as certainly as the thing is a miracle.
Lord, what a thing is fear! How now, friend, you
have been industrious to have got so far ahead in so
short a time. I marvel at the speed of the ass!”
“Asinus is overcome,” returned the naturalist,
mournfully. “The animal has certainly not been
idle since we separated, but he declines all my admonitions
and invitations to proceed. I hope there
is no instant fear from the savages?”
“I cannot say that; I cannot say that; matters are
not as they should be atween the squatter and the
Tetons, nor will I answer as yet for the safety of
any scalp among us. The beast is broken down!
you have urged him beyond his natural gifts, and he
is like a worried hound. There is pity and discretion
in all things, even though a man be riding for
his life.”
“You indicated the star,” returned the Doctor,
“and I deemed it expedient to use great diligence in
pursuing the direction.”
“Did you expect to reach it by such haste! Go,
go; you talk boldly of the creatur's of the Lord,
though I plainly see you are but a child in matters
that concern their gifts and instincts. What a plight
would you now be in, if there was need for a long
and a quick push with our heels.”
“The fault exists in the formation of the quadruped,”
said Obed, whose placid temper began to revolt
under so many scandalous imputations. “Had there
been rotary levers for two of the members, a moiety
of the fatigue would have been saved, for one item—”
“That, for your moiety's and rotaries, and items,
man; a jaded ass is a jaded ass, and he who denies it
is but a brother of the beast itself. Now, captain,
are we driven to choose one of two evils. We must
either abandon this man, who has been too much
with us through good and bad to be easily cast away,
or we must seek a cover to let the animal rest.”
“Venerable venator!” exclaimed the alarmed
Obed; “I conjure you by all the secret sympathies
of our common nature, by all the hidden—”
“Ah, fear has brought him to talk a little rational
sense! It is not natur', truly, to abandon a brother in
distress; and the Lord he knows that I have never
yet done the shameful deed. You are right, friend,
you are right; we must all be hidden, and that
speedily. But what to do with the ass! Friend
“He is an ancient and faithful servant,” returned
the disconsolate Obed, “and with pain should I see
him come to any harm. Fetter his lower limbs, and
leave him to repose in this bed of herbage. I will
engage he shall be found where he is left, in the
morning.”
“And the Siouxes? What would become of the
beast should any of the red imps catch a peep at his
ears, growing up out of the grass like two mulleintops!”
cried the bee-hunter. “They would stick
him as full of arrows, as a woman's cushion is full of
pins, and then believe they had done the job for the
father of all rabbits! My word for it but they would
find out their blunder at the first mouthful!”
Middleton, who began to grow impatient under the
protracted discussion, now interposed, and, as a good
deal of deference was paid to his superior rank, he
quickly prevailed in his efforts to effect a sort of
compromise. The humble Asinus, too meek and
too weary to make any resistance, was soon tethered
and deposited in his bed of dying grass, where he
was left with a perfect confidence on the part of his
master of finding him, again, at the expiration of a
few hours. The old man strongly remonstrated
against this arrangement, and more than once hinted
that the knife was much more certain than the tether,
but the petitions of Obed, aided perhaps by the secret
reluctance of the trapper to destroy the beast, were
the means of saving its life. When Asinus was thus
secured, and as his master believed secreted, the whole
party proceeded to find some place where they might
rest themselves during the time required for the repose
of the animal.
According to the calculations of the trapper they
had ridden twenty miles since the commencement of
their flight. The delicate frame of Inez began to
robust, but still feminine person of Ellen, insensible
to the extraordinary effort she had made. Middleton
himself was not sorry to repose, nor did the vigorous
and high spirited Paul hesitate to confess that he
should be all the better for a little rest. The old
man alone seemed indifferent to the usual claims of
nature. Although but little accustomed to the unusual
description of exercise he had just been taking, he
appeared to bid defiance to all the usual attacks of
human infirmities. Though evidently so near its
dissolution, his attenuated frame still stood like the
shaft of seasoned oak, dry, naked, and tempest-riven,
but unbending and apparently indurated to the consistency
of stone. On the present occasion he conducted
the search for a resting-place, which was
immediately commenced, with all the energy of
youth, tempered by the discretion and experience of
his great age.
The bed of grass, in which the Doctor had been
met, and in which his ass had just been left, was followed
a little distance until it was found that the
rolling swells of the prairie were melting away into
one vast level plain, that was covered, for miles on
miles, with the same species of herbage.
“Ah, this may do, this may do,” said the old man,
when they arrived on the borders of this sea of withered
grass; “I know the spot, and often have I lain
in its secret holes, for days at a time, while the savages
have been hunting the buffaloes on the open
ground. We must enter it with great care, for a
broad trail might be seen, and Indian curiosity is a
dangerous neighbour.”
Leading the way himself, he selected a spot where
the tall coarse herbage stood most erect, growing not
unlike a bed of reeds both in height and density.
Here he entered, singly, directing the others to follow
as nearly as possible in his own footsteps. When
the wilderness of weeds, he gave his directions to
Paul and Middleton, who continued a direct route
deeper into the place, while he dismounted and returned
on his tracks to the margin of the meadow.
Here he passed many minutes in replacing the trodden
grass, and in effacing, as far as possible, every
evidence of their passage.
In the mean time the rest of the party continued
their progress, not without toil, and consequently at
a very moderate gait, until they had penetrated a
mile into the place. Here they found a spot suited
to their circumstances, and dismounting, they began
to make their dispositions to pass the remainder of
the night. By this time the trapper had rejoined the
party, and again resumed the direction of their proceedings.
The weeds and grass were soon plucked and cut
from an area of sufficient extent, and a bed for Inez
and Ellen was speedily made, a little apart, which
for sweetness and case might have rivalled one of
down. The exhausted females, after receiving some
light refreshments from the provident stores of Paul
and the old man, now sought their repose, leaving
their more stout companions at liberty to provide for
their own necessities. Middleton and Paul were not
long in following the example of their betrothed,
leaving the trapper and the naturalist still seated
around a savoury dish of bison's meat, which had
been cooked at a previous halt, and which was, as
usual, eaten cold.
A certain lingering sensation, which had so long
been uppermost in the mind of Obed, temporarily
banished sleep; and as for the old man, his wants
were rendered, by habit and necessity, as seemingly
subject to his will as though they altogether depended
on the pleasure of the moment. Like his companion
he chose therefore to watch, instead of sleeping.
“If the children of ease and security knew the
hardships and dangers the students of nature encounter
in their behalf,” said Obed, after a moment of silence,
when Middleton took his leave for the night,
“pillars of silver, and statues of brass would be reared
as the everlasting monuments of their glory!”
“I know not, I know not,” returned his companion;
“silver is far from plenty, at least in the wilderness,
and your brazen idols are forbidden in the commandments
of the Lord.”
“Such indeed was the opinion of the great lawgiver
of the Jews, but the Egyptians and the Chaldeans,
the Greeks and the Romans, were wont to
manifest their gratitude in these types of the human
form. Indeed many of the illustrious masters of antiquity,
have by the aid of science and skill, even outdone
the works of nature, and exhibited a beauty and
perfection in the human form that are difficult to be
found in the rarest living specimens of any of the
species; genus, homo.”
“Can your idols walk or speak, or have they the
glorious gift of reason?” demanded the trapper with
some indignation in his voice; “though but little
given to run into the noise and chatter of the settlements,
yet have I been into the towns in my day, to
barter the peltry for lead and powder, and often have
I seen your waxen dolls, with their tawdry clothes
and glass eyes.”
“Waxen dolls!” interrupted Obed; “it is profanation,
in the view of the arts, to liken the miserable
handy-work of the dealers in wax to the pure models
of antiquity!”
“It is profanation in the eyes of the Lord,” retorted
the old man, “to liken the works of his creatur's
to the power of his own hand.”
“Venerable venator,” resumed the naturalist,
clearing his throat, like one who was much in earnest,
“let us discuss understandingly and in amity. You
dwells on those precious jewels, which it was my
happy fortune formerly to witness among the treasured
glories of the Old World.”
“Old World!” retorted the trapper, “that is the
miserable cry of all the half-starved miscreants that
have come into this blessed land, since the days of
my boyhood! They tell you of the Old World; as
if the Lord had not the power and the will to create
the universe in a day, or as if he had not bestowed
his gifts with an equal hand, though not with an equal
mind or equal wisdom have they been received and
used. Were they to say a worn out, and an abused,
and a sacrilegious world, they might not be so far
from the truth!”
Doctor Battius, who found it quite as arduous a
task to maintain any of his favourite positions with
so irregular an antagonist, as he would have found it
difficult to keep his feet within the hug of a western
wrestler, hemmed aloud, and profited by the new
opening the trapper had made, to shift the grounds of
the discussion—
“By Old and New World, my excellent associate,”
he said, “it is not to be understood that the hills, and
the vallies, the rocks and the rivers of our own moiety
of the earth do not, physically speaking, bear a
date as ancient as the spot on which the bricks of
Babylon are found; it merely signifies that its moral
existence is not co-equal with its physical or geological
formation.”
“Anan!” said the old man, looking up inquiringly
into the face of the philosopher.
“Merely that it has not been so long known in
morals as the other countries of Christendom.”
“So much the better, so much the better. I am
no great admirator of your old morals, as you call
them, for I have ever found, and I have liv'd long as
it were in the very heart of natur', that your old morals
the rules of the Lord, to suit their own wickedness,
when their devilish cunning has had too much time
to trifle with his commands.”
“Nay, venerable hunter, still am I not comprehended.
By morals I do not mean the limited and
literal signification of the term, such as is conveyed
in its synonyme, morality, but the practices of men
as connected with their daily intercourse, their institutions,
and their laws.”
“And such I call barefaced and downright wantonness
and waste,” interrupted his sturdy disputant.
“Well, be it so,” returned the Doctor, abandoning
the explanation in despair. “Perhaps I have conceded
too much,” he then instantly added, fancying that
he still saw the glimmerings of an argument through
another chink in the discourse. “Perhaps I have
conceded too much in saying that this hemisphere is
literally as old, in its formation, as that which embraces
the venerable quarters of Europe, Asia, and
Africa.”
“It is easy to say an alder is not so tall as a pine,
but it would be hard to prove. Can you give a reason
for such a wicked belief.”
“The reasons are numerous and powerful,” returned
the Doctor, delighted by this encouraging
opening. “Look into the plains of Egypt and Arabia;
their sandy deserts teem with the monuments of
their antiquity; and then we have also recorded documents
of their glory, doubling the proofs of their
former greatness, now that they lie stripped of their
fertility; while we look in vain for similar evidences
that man has ever reached the summit of civilization
on this continent, or search, without our reward, for
the path by which he has made the downward journey
to his present condition of second childhood.”
“And what see you in all this?” demanded the
trapper, who, though a little confused by the terms
“A demonstration of my problem, that nature did
not make such a vast region to lie an uninhabited
waste so many ages. This is merely the moral view
of the subject; as to the more exact and geological—”
“Your morals are exact enough for me,” returned
the grave old man, “for I think I see in them the very
pride of folly. I am but little gifted in the fables of
what you call the Old World, seeing that my time has
been mainly passed looking natur' steadily in the
face, and in reasoning on what I've seen, rather than
on what I've heard in traditions. But I have never
shut my ears to the words of the good book, and
many is the long winter evening that I have passed
in the wigwams of the Delawares, listening to the
good Moravians, as they dealt forth the history and
doctrines of the elder times, to the people of the
Lenape! It was pleasant to hearken to such wisdom
after a weary hunt! Right pleasant did I find it, and
often have I talked the matter over with the Great
Serpent of the Delawares in the more peaceful hours
of our out-lyings, whether it might be on the trail of
a war-party of the Mingoes, or on the watch for a
York deer. I remember to have heard it, then and
there, said, that the Blessed Land was once fertile as
the bottoms of the Mississippi, and groaning with its
stores of grain and fruits; but that the judgment has
since fallen upon it, and that it is now more remarkable
for its barrenness than any qualities to boast of.”
“It is true; but Egypt—nay much of Africa furnishes
still more striking proofs of this exhaustion of
nature.”
“Tell me,” interrupted the old man, “is it a certain
truth that buildings are still standing in that land
of Pharoah, which may be likened in their stature,
to the hills of the 'arth?”
“It is as true as that nature never refuses to bestow
homo;—”
“It is very marvellous! and it proves how great
He must be, when his miserable creatur's can accomplish
such wonders! Many men must have been
needed to finish such an edifice; ay, and men gifted
with strength and skill too! Does the land abound
with such a race to this hour?”
“Far from it. Most of the country is a desert, and
but for a mighty river all would be so.”
“Yes; rivers are rare gifts to such as till the
ground, as any one may see who journeys far atween
the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi. But how
do you account for these changes on the face of the
'arth itself, and for this dowfall of nations, you men
of the schools?”
“It is to be ascribed to moral cau—”
“You're right—it is their morals! their wickedness
and their pride, and chiefly their waste that has
done it all! Now listen to what the experience of
an old man teaches him. I have lived long, as these
gray hairs and wrinkled hands will show, even though
my tongue should fail in the wisdom of my years. And
I have seen much of the folly of man; for his natur'
is the same, be he born in the wilderness, or be he
born in the towns. To my weak judgment it hath
ever seemed as though his gifts are not equal to his
wishes. That he would mount into the heavens, with
all his deformities about him, if he only knew the
road, no one will gainsay, that witnesses his bitter
strivings upon 'arth. If his power is not equal to his
will, it is because the wisdom of the Lord hath set
bounds to his evil workings.”
“It is much too certain that certain facts will warrant
a theory, which teaches the natural depravity of
the genus; but if science could be fairly brought to
bear on a whole species at once, for instance, education
might eradicate the evil principle.”
“That, for your education! The time has been
when I have thought it possible to make a companion
of a beast. Many are the cubs, and many are the
speckled fawns that I have reared with these old
hands, until I have even fancied them rational and
altered beings—but what did it amount to! the bear
would bite, and the deer would run, notwithstanding
my wicked conceit in fancying I could change a temper
that the Lord himself had seen fit to bestow.
Now if man is so blinded in his folly as to go on, ages
on ages, doing harm chiefly to himself, there is the
same reason to think that he was wrought his evil
here as in the countries you call so old. Look about
you, man; where are the multitudes that once peopled
these prairies; the kings and the palaces; the
riches and the mightinesses of this desert?”
“Where are the monuments that would prove the
truth of so vague a theory?”
“I know not what you call a monument?”
“The works of man! The glories of Thebes and
Balbec—columns, catacombs, and pyramids! standing
amid the sands of the East, like wrecks on a
rocky shore, to testify to the storms of ages!”
“They are gone. Time has lasted too long for them.
For why? time was made by the Lord, and they were
made by man. This very spot of reeds and grass,
on which you now sit, may once have been the garden
of some mighty king. It is the fate of all things
to ripen, and then to decay. The tree blossoms, and
bears its fruit, which falls, rots, withers, and even the
seed is lost! Go, count the rings of the oak and of
the sycamore; they lie in circles, one about another,
until the eye is blinded in striving to make out their
numbers; and yet a full change of the seasons comes
round while the stem is winding one of these little
lines about itself, like the buffaloe changing his coat
or the buck his horns; and what does it all amount
to! There does the noble tree fill its place in the
difficult to imitate than any of your pitiful pillars, for
a thousand years, until the time which the Lord hath
given it is full. Then come the winds, that you cannot
see, to rive its bark; and the waters from the
heavens, to soften its pores; and the rot, which all
can feel and none can understand, to humble its pride
and bring it to the ground. From that moment its
beauty begins to perish. It lies another hundred
years, a mouldering log, and then a mound of moss
and 'arth; a sad effigy of a human grave. This is
one of your genuine monuments, though made by a
very different power than such as belongs to your
chiselling masonry! and after all, the cunningest scout
of the whole Dahcotah nation might pass his life in
searching for the spot where it fell, and be no wiser
when his eyes grew dim than when they were first
opened. As if that was not enough to convince man
of his ignorance; and as though it were put there in
mockery of his conceit, a pine shoots up from the
roots of the oak, just as barrenness comes after fertility,
or as these wastes have been spread where a garden
may have been created. Tell me not of your
worlds that are old! it is blasphemous to set bounds
and seasons, in this manner, to the works of the Almighty,
like a woman counting the ages of her young.”
“Friend hunter, or trapper,” returned the naturalist,
clearing his throat in some intellectual confusion
at the vigorous attack of his companion, “your deductions,
if admitted by the world, would sadly circumscribe
the efforts of reason and abridge the
boundaries of knowledge.”
“So much the better—so much the better; for I
have always found that a conceited man never knows
content. All things prove it. Why have we not the
wings of the pigeon, the eyes of the eagle, and the
legs of the moose, if it had been intended that man
should be equal to all his wishes?”
“There are certain physical defects, venerable
trapper, in which I am always ready to admit great
and happy alterations might be suggested. For example,
in my own order of Phalangacru—”
“Cruel enough would be the order, that should
come from miserable hands like thine! A touch from
such a finger would destroy the mocking deformity of
a monkey! Go, go; human folly is not needed to
fill up the great design of God. There is no stature,
no beauty, no proportions, nor any colours in which
man himself can well be fashioned, that is not already
done to his hands.”
“That is touching another great and much disputed
question,” exclaimed the Doctor, who seized upon
every distinct idea that the ardent and somewhat
dogmatic old man left exposed to his mental grasp,
with the vain hope of inducing a logical discussion,
in which he might bring his battery of syllogisms to
annihilate the unscientific defences of his antagonist.
It is however unnecessary to our narrative to relate
the erratic discourse that ensued. The old man
eluded the annihilating blows of his adversary as the
light armed soldier is wont to escape the efforts of
the more regular warrior, even while he annoys him
most, and an hour passed away without bringing any
of the numerous subjects, on which they touched, to
a satisfactory conclusion. The arguments acted however
on the nervous system of the Doctor, like so
many soothing soporifics, and by the time his aged
companion was disposed to lay his head on his pack,
Obed, vastly refreshed by his recent mental joust,
was in a condition to seek his natural rest, without
enduring the torments of the incubus, in the shapes
of Teton warriors and bloody tomahawks.
| CHAPTER V. The prairie | |