University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

Chateaubriand.

I COMMENCED at Boston the route which we are now
travelling. Until I began to ascend the Alleghany hills,
I did not feel all the ties of kindred and country completely
severed. I could connect, by the chain of
association, points that were distant, indeed, but not
sundered by mountains, and which were washed in their
whole extent by the same sea, and inhabited by men
substantially of the same character and pursuits. But
when the Ohio valley opened upon my view from the
summits of these mountains; when such a wide barrier,
and so difficult as it then was to be passed, was interposed
between me and “fader land;” when I began
to descend among a people of a different character and
foreign pursuits, connected with New England's element
by an almost interminable river, then I began to experience
misgiving of mind, and the dismal feeling of
home-sickness. Then the image of my mother visited
my dreams, and it was a dreary feeling to awake and
find that the visit was but a dream. These feelings
were not at all alleviated by my reception at the first
town to which I came on the Ohio. A keel-boat was
on the eve of starting for Alexandria on Red River. I
took passage in it, and was immediately introduced to
a new mode of existence, and not a little different, as

you are aware, from the seclusion and meditation of my
studies at the University.

The degree of water did not admit the descent of
steam-boats. In fact there were but few on these
waters at that time, and I was compelled to take this
conveyance, or wait the rising of the river. At first the
novelty of this singular way of life, the freshness of the
scenery on this beautiful river, and the whimsical character
of the boatmen amused me. Their strange
curses, it is true, grated on my ear. It was an order of
beings as different from any with which I had yet been
acquainted, as though they had descended from another
planet. Whenever we ran aground, which happened
very often, the difficulty of apportioning the labor and
exposure generally occasioned disputes, which terminated
in a fist fight. Their dialect, too, made up in
equal proportions of an appropriate and peculiar slang
and profanity, is at the same time both ludicrous and
appalling. The motto with this singular and original
race is well known to be a `short life and a merry one.'
The reckless indifference with which they expose their
lives by throwing themselves, in places of difficulty, into
the furious and whirling current, or swimming amidst
the boiling foam among the sawyers, or exposing themselves
for weeks together to the damp and sultry
atmosphere, and the musquitoes of the night, makes
their career generally short, and their death sudden.
Their discourse with each other, like their dialect,
strangely mixes a kind of coarse wit, ridicule, irreverence,
and impiety together. They talk of death with

the utmost indifference, and generally encounter it as
they talk of it. A thrill of horror mixes with the involuntary
smile, as you hear the strange phrase in which
they discuss this subject.

The public has heard of some of the broad traits of
this curious race, who affirm themselves to be a mixture
of the horse and alligator. But the individuality, the
slight peculiarities that mark this race from all others,
are as yet indistinctly and but little known by any
but those who have actually been on these waters. At
the time of my descent, they constituted a distinct community
of many thousands, who would fight for each
other, as well as with each other, to the death. They
had, in fact, more of the esprit du corps, than even
sailors. Death and the steam-boats are daily diminishing
this peculiar race. Many of them pass indeed on
board the steam-boats; but the position and the duties
are so entirely different, that their characters receive a
new modification, and in this new order of things the
distinctness and peculiarity of this race will soon utterly
disappear.

At the time when I descended the river, the inhabitants
of the Ganges were scarcely more different from
the watermen of the Mississippi, than these were from
the sailors of the Atlantic, or indeed from any class of
people that I had seen. They had, too, an acquired
dexterity, a cleverness in the discharge of their hard
and diversified duties, a generous intrepidity, and an
unbounded kindness towards each other, when they
were in good temper, which threw a moral interest

over their character. The long voyages on these rivers
have their daily incidents, dangers, and escapes from
storms, and sawyers, and falling-in banks and trees,
and dangers too numerous and anomalous to be classed.
These incidents, however little they might figure in
comparison with the records of a log-book at sea, furnish
no inconsiderable occasion for exultation and discussion,
as the boat ties up to the willow, and the hands
kindle a bright fire among the huge piles of drift wood,
which blazes high, and illumines the deep forest, and
drives away the wolves and the owls, and the men seat
themselves round the fire for their “filley” of whiskey.
Then commence the long and marvellous stories of
what they have seen and adventured; and then follows
a sleep under the blue canopy, as profound as that of
the grave.

We had much fatigue, and encountered many dangers,
and there were many quarrels and reconciliations,
before we reached the mouth of Red River. That river
discharges its waters into the Mississippi by a broad
and creeping stream, through a vast and profound
swamp. It seems a deep canal, its dark surface ruffled
only by the darting of huge and strange fishes through
its sluggish waters; the foaming path of the monstrous
alligator gar, the shark of rivers, a thousand little
silver fishes leaping from the water, and sparkling like
diamonds; numberless alligators traversing the waters in
every direction, and seeming to be logs possessing the
power of self-direction; or occasionally these logs
sinking one end in the water, and raising the other in

the air, and making a deep and frightful bellow, between
the hiss of a serpent and the roaring of a bull; the
lazy and droning flight of monstrous birds, slowly flapping
their wings, and carelessly sailing along just over
the surface of these dark and mephitic waters, with a
savage and outlandish scream, apparently all neck,
legs, and feathers; a soil above the bank, greasy and
slippery with a deposit of slime; trees marked fourteen
feet high by an overflow of half the year; gullies seventy
feet deep, and large enough to be the outlets of
rivers, covered at the bottom with putrefying logs, and
connecting the river with broad and sluggish lakes, too
thickly covered with a coat of green buff to be ruffled
by the winds which can scarcely find their way through
the dense forests; moccasin snakes, writhing their huge
and scaly backs at the bottom of these dark gullies;
such was the scenery that met my eye, as I advanced
through the first thirty miles of my entrance into that
region, which had been so embellished by my fancy. I
looked round me, and the trees, as far as I could see,
were festooned with the black and funereal drapery of
long moss. My eyes, my ears, and my nostrils joined
to admonish me that here Fever had erected his throne.
I went on board my boat at the approach of night; and
when, to get rid of my thoughts, I laid me down in my
narrow and sweltering birth, millions of musquetoes
raised their dismal hum, and settled on my face. Drive
away the first thousand, sated with blood, and another
thousand succeeds, and `in that war there is no discharge.'
A hundred owls, perched in the deep swamp,
in all the tones of screaming, hooting, grunting, and in
every note, from the wail of an infant to the growl of a
bear, sing your requiem.

You rise from a sleep attained under such auspices,
and crawl up the greasy banks to the cabins of the
wood-cutters. You see here inhabitants of an appearance
and countenance in full keeping with the surrounding
scenery. There is scarcely one of them but
what has a monstrous protuberance in the stomach,
sufficiently obvious to the eye, vulgarly called an `ague-cake,'
a yellowish white complexion, finely described
in the language of the country, by the term `tallow
face.' There is an indercribable transparency of the
skin, which seems to indicate water between the cuticle
and the flesh. Eyes, preternaturally rolling and brilliant,
glare in the centre of a large, morbid circle, in
which the hues of red, black, and yellow are mixed.
The small children bear all these dismal markings of
the climate in miniature. Dirty and ragged, as mischievous
as they are deformed, they roll about upon
the slippery clay with an agility and alertness, from
their appearance altogether incredible; for you would
suppose them too feeble and clumsy to move. There
is something unique, chilling, and cadaverous in the
persons of both old and young. You would suppose
that the grave was dug for them. But the more slender
and uncertain their hold to life, the more gaily they
seem to enjoy it. They laugh and shout, and drink and
blaspheme, and utter their tale of obscenity, or, it may
be, of murder, with bacchanalian joyousness. Shut

your eyes, and you would suppose yourself in the midst
of the merriest group in the world. Open them, and
look upon the laughers, and see the strange fire of their
eye, and you will almost believe the chilling stories of
Vampyres.

The first evening of my arrival in these waters found
us at the point where the Black, Red, and Tensas rivers
mingle their waters in an immense swamp, cheered by
the note of no bird of song, unenlivened by the flocks
of healthful and edible fowls, as the geese, ducks, and
swans, and only vocal with the shrill notes of the jay,
the cawing of crows, and the wheeling flight of numberless
carrion vultures, that prey on the dead fish that
float to the shores. On the verge of the bank above
where we lay, and with a little opening in the dead
forest, was a family such as I have described. An inhabitant
of such a cabin who lasts two years, may be
thought fortunate and long-lived. They gave me thrilling
anecdotes, if such they may be called, of the tenants
of two fresh graves that I noticed in the little melon
garden by the cabin. They were of that class of outlawed
and homeless strangers, of hich there are thousands
up and down the course of the Mississppi. The
owner of the cabin was a wood-cutter for the steamboats,
and had employed these men to aid him. They
had cut wood, drunk whiskey, gambled, and fought, and
gouged; and the woman told us, that they had been
`charming funny men.' But, I use her words, they
took the ague, had the fever, and the ague-cake, and
grew sullen, and would not eat, and did not care for

their whiskey. We sent for an old French hunter,
to bring them some good herbs, but before he come,
they would not live any longer, and so they died.

The wife and the mother in this family had once, I
dare say, been pretty. She had had the ague four
years in succession, and now had the swelling, the
filthiness, the brilliant eye, the flippant tongue, and ran
on from story to story with more than the garrulity of an
old French woman. On an emergency, I presume,
she could have handled the dirk with dexterity. She
informed me, that for a month in the preceding spring
they had been overflowed, and she was in the midst of
a flooded swamp, thirty miles in diameter. They built
a house on a raft of logs fastened together, and secured
from floating away with grape vines. On this raft was
stationed the family oxen, pigs, dogs, chickens, and all.
They had a barrel of whiskey to keep up their spirits.
Each of these logs was covered with red slime, and as
slippery as if greased. And she told us that the logs
often brought up the big stomachs of her clumsy children,
and that it was hard to keep their shirts clean, as
they were the only article of dress they wore. She took
me for a cotton-planter, and said, “Now, you planters
have but one house, and we wood-cutters have two.
We have our floating house on the raft, and when the
river falls, and that grounds, we build us another on
the bank. Look you there, only three paces from my
door used to lie of a sunny morning a couple of thundering
alligators, and my Franky there, pointing to a boy,
who seemed about four years, who had the customary

prominence in front, and was otherwise as mischievous
and as ugly an urchin as you would wish to see, that
there boy with half a shirt, would needs be playing
some of his `rusty shines,' the funny dog, and so he
crawled out, and gave one of them a rap on the snout
with the broomstick. The monstrous devil curled his
tail, and gave Franky a slap, which tossed him in the
air like a bat-ball; and the beast would have had the
eating of Franky in a trice. But I heard Franky
scream, as the alligator struck him. I seized a kettle
of boiling water, and threw it on the horrid creature,
just as he showed his white teeth to eat Franky, and
this drove my gentleman into the water.”

The well remembered song of my infancy rung in
my ears,

and a chill, as of death, came over me, when I thought
that this was the reality of that picture, which to my
imagination had been so delightful. I felt, too, the
truth and application of the trite New England proverb,
“that one half the world does not know how the other
half lives.” The comforting prediction of my friends
rung in my ears, “In that savage country you will lay
your bones.” Certainly, thought I, the assignment of
your bounds must be the sport of a blind destiny.
There are hills, and dales, and mountain streams, and
healthful breezes, and cheerful scenery, and millions of
unoccupied acres of fertile country, where the means of
subsistence even are at least as easy as here. How
could voluntary agents, with the power of locomotion,
ever have fixed themselves from choice, in these dire
abodes? And yet there are always people enough
found ready to occupy these positions. The philosophy
of a boatman is quick, and near the surface. The
boatmen accounted for their choice of such places by
saying, that it required every sort of people to make a
world. For my part, I almost fancied, that I could feel
the first pains of a commencing ague-cake. At night I
actually caught myself making a search, if nothing
of the kind was to be felt. Had there been a good
boat returning to Pittsburg, and had I not been so proud
of possessing at home that high reputation for perseverance,
I should, probably, have whistled back again.
But I imagined the salutation, with which, I was aware,
I should be greeted in my native village on my return,
“I told you so.” It is hard for a young man to be
cheered home in this way. Pride came in aid of my
sinking courage and perseverance; and with a heavy
heart I continued to mount against the stream.

I made my first residence in these regions, and my
first acquaintance with southern men, manners, and
things, at Alexandria on Red river. It may be supposed
from my peculiar character and propensities, that I
studied the country and the men with an intense interest.
I had many things to unlearn, to prepare me for
this study, and many things to learn anew. I was at
once aware, that much of what had been said of the
country abroad, was founded either in ignorance or
misrepresentation. This town is the centre of a new
and rich cotton-planting country, where small fortunes,

and in some instances large ones have been very rapidly
acquired. The planters are, with few exceptions,
honorable and high-minded men, with very peculiar
ideas and manners, indeed, naturally resulting from
their peculiar situation and condition in life. They are
all in the highest degree hospitable. Acquiring their
money easily, they spend it with reckless profusion. I
was invited with great courteousness to their balls, of
which they are extremely fond, shared their amusements,
as far as my habits of life would allow me, and
more than all I joined them in their hunting parties, of
which I was almost as fond as they were themselves.
Their favorite chase, and I may add mine too, is fire-hunting,
or hunting by night. They have leashes of
hounds tethered together, and one of these hounds, an
old and experienced one, the patriarch of the establishment,
carries a bell. When they want sure information
where the game is, they let him loose, and by the tinkling
of his bell, they know where he is. Some black
people carry fire-pans, in which they put fat and blazing
torches of pine, which creates a brilliant and dazzling
glare. When they come upon the deer, lying peaceably
in his nightly covert, he raises himself to contemplate
all this brilliance, and his eyes dilated with his intense
curiosity, glare like little balls of fire. These
become most striking marks for the aim of the rifle.
The huntsman takes aim between these two balls of
fire, and the stupid animal stands still in gazing astonishment
to receive the shot. The whole group of
huntsmen in their hunting-shirts, the blacks with their
fire-pans and white eyes, the yelping hounds, all eager
for the chase, the very horses, snorting and pawing the
ground with impatience to start, make, all taken together,
a striking picture. It becomes still more striking
as you observe the procession moving along the
deep forests, the glaring lights casting their peculiar and
shadowy brilliance upon the trees. But amidst these
sports and pursuits, and in my earnest and delighted
study of southern men and manners, an evil was impending
over my head, one of the terrible things, which
my dear mother had most often rung in my ears, as my
probable lot in a sickly and a strange land. I had inhaled
sufficient miasma to give me the fever of the country.
I was seized so suddenly and violently, as to become
unconscious for some hours. When I regained
consciousness, I found myself in bed surrounded with
strange faces, and so extremely weak, as to be unable
to turn myself in bed. The people were as kind to
me as I had any right to expect. But a great many unfriended
strangers come here, sicken, and die; many of
them bringing their diseases upon themselves by their
own imprudence and intemperance. The people, accustomed
to see many cases of the kind, and not used
to make much discrimination, consider all cases as one
thing. They are too much in the habit of regarding
death as Peter Pindar says, the king did, who asked,
“What's death? What's death? Nothing but a little
loss of breath.” A frightful ringing was in my ears.
The continued uproar of the place where I was, became
confounded in my head with this ringing, the effect of
disease. From the united influence of these things
added to the progress of my disease, I fell into the
wildest delirium. Frightful circles of light glared before
my eyes, especially in the night. At one time I
imagined myself an inhabitant of the infernal regions.
I saw the fiends about me, heard their exulting shouts,
and felt them pouring baskets of burning coals upon my
head. Then, in a moment, I was transported to the
church-yard, back of the church in my native village,
and I was laboriously engaged there in digging up
skulls. Then the scene would shift, and become pleasant
to a certain degree. The scene would present the
beautiful meadow in front of my father's house, and my
father and the family moving to church, as they had been
wont in times past, and chiding me for lingering behind.
In these paroxysms, one thought was always uppermost,
that I was away from home, and struggling to disengage
myself from something, that detained me, that I might
escape, and get home. Unknown to the people of
the house, I had my lucid intervals, in which I lay in a
state of infantine weakness, but of perfect consciousness
and repose. Sick as I was, and apparently on the
verge of death, and “given out,” as the phrase of the
country is, by the people, I yet felt a kind of strange
pleasure in hearing them discuss the subject of my
death and burial. If any body wishes to know exactly
of how much consequence he is in the eyes of
people, who have no concern in him, and no motive to
induce them to manifest what they have not, let that
person be sick, apparently unto death, in a strange
place, and hear the people discuss his case with all the
recklessness of persons, who think that they are neither
heard nor understood. We should then discover at
once that there are many people in the world, who
deem that it will go on very well without us. We might
then have striking foretastes how little they will disturb
themselves about our exit, after we are actually gone.
There were other times, in which I felt keenly and bitterly
the dread of death, the unwillingness to leave
“the precincts of this cheerful clay,” and earnest desires,
that I might recover. I have reason to think, that
I received great and uncommon attention; for although
they were people, who subsisted by such cases as mine,
they appeared to take great care of me. I lay long
sick, and even after my fever had formed a salutary
crisis, it was not expected, for many days, that I should
recover. But, as it happened, the event disappointed
all their calculations with respect to me. The Author
of my being had more for me to do and to suffer on the
earth. I regained perfect consciousness, though in such
extreme weakness, as not to be able to turn myself in
bed. My first feelings were those of devout thankfulness.
My first lucid thoughts expressed themselves in
a question from the Bible, “What doest thou here, Elijah?”
Why had I wandered away from a peaceful and
religious home, and from tender and endeared relatives
to a place like this? The anxiety, the tenderness, the
maternal nursing of my mother in a fever, which I had
had at home, visited my remembrance. Oh! I thought
all their evil omens fell far short of the actual state of
things, that I had experienced. I earnestly wished,
that all those unfortunates that had the wandering bump
in their skulls, could know what I did, without knowing
it at the same expense; that they could be taken up and
carried through mid air, and see and comprehend all that
a sick and unfriended stranger has to hope under such
circumstances. How quietly afterwards would they set
themselves down to any honest pursuit, that would preclude
the necessity of wandering. I much fear that the
close of my adventures, if you have patience to listen
to the close, may inculcate different feelings. But be
it remembered, that to one fortunate termination, like
mine, there are fifty, whose uniform color is the same
with that of the beginning of my adventures.

But I perceive I am digressing, and drawing too
largely on your patience. I have been deeply affected,
and my heart has bled to witness the end of so many
of my compatriots in this extreme desertion and misery,
and with the evils of wandering in new and wild countries.
My feelings and my recollections have betrayed
me into these details, which, I would hope, however,
will not be without their use. I resume the thread of
events. About the time that I regained my strength,
a party of young men were establishing a partnership
to travel into the Spanish country, to traffic with the
Spanish and Indians for mules. Their project was
such as would gratify my favorite propensity to travel
into that region. They appeared to be young men of
standing, and had the appearance and manners of gentlemen.
I joined myself to them as a partner. There

were eight of us in all, well armed and equipped, and
furnished with as much merchandise as our means and
funds would enable us to purchase. They laughed
heartily at one part of my outfits, which was a small,
but choice collection of books. We packed our merchandise,
provisions, tents, ammunition, and our outfits
generally, on sumpter mules, and started with gay hearts
to enter the Spanish country by the sources of the
Arkansas.

We closed our arrangements at Natchitoches, the
last village in Louisiana towards the Spanish frontier.
I had occasion to experiment the truth of the remark,
that in travelling towards the frontier, the decreasing
scale of civilization and improvement exhibits an accurate
illustration of inverted history. Improvements
decrease in the order of distance, as they have increased
in the order of time. We travelled down six centuries
in as many days. First, we lost sight of handsome and
commodious houses, residences of builders, who often
saw good models. We gradually lost sight of the
mansions of the opulent cotton-planters, who are noted
for their hospitality. We lost sight of men dressed in
articles of imported fabric. Then we traversed the
belt of vachers and shepherds, with their blanket-capotes
and their comfortable, but rustic log establishments.
Then we traversed the region of the half savage
white inhabitants, the intermediate race between savage
and civilized man. On the Kiamesia we passed the
American garrison, and saw the cheering sight of the
spirit-stirring stars and stripes, waving above the rude

fortress and the comfortable quarters, three hundred
leagues from the compact population of the country.
We joined to admire the genius of a country yet so
young, and which has thus early learned to stretch her
maternal arms to these remote deserts, in token of
efficient protection to the frontier people from the terrors
of the ruthless savages.

It was not far from this garrison that my eye dilated,
and my heart expanded, as we opened upon one of
those boundless grassy plains that stretch beyond the
horizon, and almost beyond the imagination. Such a
view presents to me the image of infinitude and eternity
still more strongly, than a distant view of the ocean.
We entered with the rising sun. One part of the disk
of that glorious orb seemed to touch the verdure, and
the other the sky. Here we met a company of Spanish
muleteers descending with a drove of horses and mules
to Louisiana. They were a new and striking variety
of the species. They inhabit an arid soil, a dry climate,
elevated table land, a plain, which is ventilated in its
southern extremity by the unchangeable gales of the
tropical sea, and on the north by breezes brought down
from snow-capped mountains. They subsist on flesh
and milk, and unfortunately of late, from their connexion
with our country, they have added whiskey to their
beverage. They almost live on horseback. The
training and managing of horses and mules, and the noosing
of them and of cattle by throwing the noosed rope,
at which they acquire an incredible dexterity, constitute
their employment. In this dry atmosphere, and under

this burning sun, their skin almost dries to the consistency
of parchment. They have little flesh or fat to
become the seat of disease. Living, as they do, there
seems to be no vulnerable point upon which death may
assail them. Of course they generally live to extreme
old age, and die the death of nature. They are simple
and timid, and seem less capable of combination of
thought than the savages. Their most definite directions
of places to us were towards the rising or the
setting sun; and their most accurate measures of distance
were grande distancia, or poca distancia, a great
or a little distance. They have a peculiar physiognomy,
repulsive at first sight, but on closer inspection amiable.
I found them in fact, in the general, an extremely
affectionate and amiable people. They are dressed in
the tanned skins of their cattle and game, and their costume
differs considerably in appearance from that of their
neighbours, the French and the savages. For boots
they wear a kind of leather leggings, which they call
“buccarees,” with huge silver spurs. They have a singular-shaped
wooden saddle, covered with some kind
of skins, with a circular and painted elevation of wood
in front, and very large wooden stirrups. The hat is
of great weight, and tapers in the crown like the apex
of a cone. About the horse's neck they carry a great
length of coiled rope of buffaloe's hair, ready for the
operation of noosing any animal that shall come in their
way. They have also appended to the horse's neck a
gourd or bottle, ready to drop into the stream or
branch, through the channel of which they may pass,
and dip up their water for drinking. When the carabine
and spear are added to these equipments, and laid
across the saddle at right angles to the horse's path,
the rider, the horse, and the furnishing, taken together,
afford a most uncouth and ludicrous figure. These
cavaliers of parchment, with lantern jaws, and nose and
chin almost touching, reminded us strongly of the
ancient Spanish plates of Don Quixote astride of Rosinante.
The women, on the contrary, seemed generally
en bon point, short, plump, and full fed, and, for the
most part, with eyes of great brilliancy and blackness.
In preparing the bread, called tortillas, the preparation
of which seemed their chief employment, they have a
couple of oblong stones, the one concave, and the other
convex, to match it. With these stones the women
grind the maize, after it has been prepared by lye, to an
impalpable paste, which they made into cakes by patting
in the palms of their hands, keeping time, as they
do it, to a brisk and not unpleasant tune. They carried
their hospitality to extremes, sharing their tortillas,
tasajo, bear's oil, and coffee, with us to the last point
of division.

On these level plains some of my dreams of the
pleasures of wandering were realized. We were all in
the morning of life, full of health and spirits, on horseback,
and breathing a most salubrious air, with a boundless
horizon open before us, and shaping our future
fortune and success in the elastic mould of youthful
hope and imagination, wue could herdly be other than
happy. Sometimes we saw, scouring away from our

path, horses, asses, mules, buffaloes, and wolves, in
countless multitudes, and we took, almost with too much
ease to give pleasure in the chase, whatever we needed
for luxurious subsistence. The passage of creeks and
brooks across the prairies is marked, to the utmost extent
of vision, by a fringe of wood and countless flowering
shrubs. Sometimes we ascended an elevation of
some height, swelling gently from the plain. Here the
eye traces, as on an immense map, the formation and
gradual enlargement of these rivulets, and sees them
curving their meandering lines to a point of union with
another of the same kind. The broadened fringe of
wood indicates the enlargement of the stream, and the
eyé takes in at one glance the gradual formation of
rivers. The night brought us up on the edge of one
of these streams. Our beasts are turned loose to stretch
themselves on the short and tender grass, to feed and
repose. The riders collect round a fire in the centre.
Supper is prepared with bread, coffee, and the tenderest
parts of the buffalo, venison, and other game.
The appetite, sharpened by exercise on horseback, and
by the salubrious air, is devouring. The story circulates.
Past adventures are recounted, and if they
receive something of the coloring of romance, it may
be traced to feelings that grow out of the occasion.
The projects and the mode of journeying on the morrow
are discussed and settled. The fire flickers in the
midst. The wild horses neigh, and the prairie wolves
howl, in the distance. Except the weather threatens
storm, the tents are not pitched. The temperature of
the night air is both salutary and delightful. The
blankets are spread upon the tender grass, and under
a canopy of the softest blue, decked with all the
visible lights of the sky. The party sink to a repose,
which the exercise of the preceding day renders as
unbroken and dreamless, as that of the grave. I awoke
more than once unconscious that a moment had elapsed,
between the time of my lying down and my rising.

The day before we came in view of the Rocky mountains,
I saw in the greatest perfection that impressive,
and, to me, almost sublime spectacle, an immense drove
of wild horses, for a long time hovering round our path
across the prairie. I had often seen great numbers of
them before, mixed with other animals, apparently quiet,
and grazing like the rest. Here there were thousands
unmixed, unemployed; their motions, if such a comparison
might be allowed, as darting and as wild as those
of humming-birds on the flowers. The tremendous
snorts with which the front columns of the phalanx
made known their approach to us, seemed to be their
wild and energetic way of expressing their pity and
disdain for the servile lot of our horses, of which they
appeared to be taking a survey. They were of all
colors, mixed, spotted, and diversified with every hue,
from the brightest white to clear and shining black;
and of every form and structure, from the long and
slender racer, to those of firmer limbs and heavier
mould; and of all ages, from the curvetting colt to the
range of patriarchal steeds, drawn up in a line, and
holding their high heads for a survey of us, in the rear.

Sometimes they curved their necks, and made no more
progress than just enongh to keep pace with our advance.
Then there was a kind of slow and walking
minuet, in which they performed various evolutions
with the precision of the figures of a country dance.
Then a rapid movement shifted the front to the rear.
But still, in all their evolutions and movements, like
the flight of sea-fowl, their lines were regular, and free
from all indications of confusion. At times a spontaneous
and sudden movement towards us, almost inspired
the apprehension of an united attack upon us. After
a moment's advance, a snort and a rapid retrograde
movement seemed to testify their proud estimate of
their wild independence. The infinite variety of their
rapid movements, their tamperings, and manœuvres
were of such a wild and almost terrific character, that
it required but a moderate stretch of fancy to suppose
them the genii of these grassy plains. At one period
they were formed for an immense depth in front of us.
A wheel, executed almost with the rapidity of thought,
presented them hovering on our flanks. Then, again,
the cloud of dust that enveloped their movements,
cleared away, and presented them in our rear. They
evidently operated as a great annoyance to the horses
and mules of our cavalcade. The frighted movements,
the increased indications of fatigue, sufficiently evidenced,
with their frequent neighings, what unpleasant
neighbours they considered their wild compatriots to be.
So much did our horses appear to suffer from fatigue
and terror in consequence of their vicinity, that we
were thinking of some way in which to drive them off;
when on a sudden a patient and laborious donkey of
the establishment, who appeared to have regarded all
their movements with philosophic indifference, pricked
up his long ears, and gave a loud and most sonorous
bray from his vocal shells. Instantly this prodigious
multitude, and there were thousands of them, took
what the Spanish call the “stompado.” With a trampling
like the noise of thunder, or still more like that of
an earthquake, a noise that was absolutely appalling,
they took to their heels, and were all in a few moments
invisible in the verdant depths of the plains, and we
saw them no more.

It was in the first opening of spring, after a slow
and easy journey of five weeks from Natchitoches, that
we arrived at last in view of that immense chain of
mountains, commonly denominated “the Rocky Mountains,”
at the point where the Arkansas finds its way
from among them to the plain. No time will erase
from my mind the impressions of awe and grandeur,
excited by the distant view and the gradual approach
to this sublime chain of mountains. We had been
prepared for this impression by an approach of two
hundred leagues, through a level plain of short and
soft grass, seldom able to discover in our whole
horizon, a tree, a shrub, an eminence, or any other
object but herds of animals, to diversify the scene.
The soil itself is a fine and reddish-colored sand, and
the whole landscape has an appearance of monotonous
amenity.

Amidst snowy mountains the Arkansas collects a
cold, broad, and rushing stream, which seems to pour
itself with the joy of emancipation upon the thirsty and
absorbent plain, which, in the passage of a few leagues,
seems to have swallowed up these abundant waters,
and the river chafes upon the sand and pebbles a shallow
and fordable stream. The soft and level nature
of the landscape continues quite up to the point, where
the earth is covered with the massive fragments of the
mountain disengaged by the rush of cascades, by earthquakes,
and time. With such contrast, and from such
a pedestal, rises Mount Pike into mid air. His blackening
sides, and hoary summit, are a kind of sea-mark
at immense distances over the plain. He elevates his
gigantic head, and frowns upon the sea of verdure below
him, taking his everlasting repose, solitary and
detached from the hundred mountains, apparently
younger members of the family, which shrink with
filial awe at a distance from him. Clouds and storms
hang their drapery round his sides. The rains pour,
and the cascades dash far below his conical head,
which reflects the sun-beams from the snow of ages.