University of Virginia Library

TRAITS OF THE PRAIRIES.

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.

The mustang pony, the invariable companion of
the inhabitant of the prairie, whether he is rich or
poor, is a little creature, apparently narrow-chested,
and small across the loins. Its head is not finely
formed or well set upon a straight neck. There is
a want of compactness about the figure, and a looseness
about the muscles. The hind legs are long,
and form, from the hip to the hoof, a bend as regular
as a bow. It is not handsome, but it gives a spring
when under the saddle most delightful. The mustang
is not subject to the ordinary evils of horseflesh.
Sparing in diet, a stranger to grain, easily
satisfied, whether on growing or dead grass, it seems
to be stubbed and twisted, tough and everlasting,
never poor or markedly fat; under all weathers and
seasons, it does an amount of work, with ease, that
turn all other horses, if they lived through it, into
broken down drudges. The eyes of the mustang
pony, however, tell you a tale; they are of a witching
hazel, of curiously crimson-speckled blue, deep
and beautiful as a precious stone, and lighted up by
a bit of mischief that betrays the lurking devil within.

Such is the mustang pony, adapted to the prairie as
perfectly as its sunshine and flowers. Their riders
cherish the trappings for them that betray old Spain;
the saddle with its high pummel and crupper; dangling
on either side are the enormous wooden stirrups,
looking like a huge pair of mallets; the whole
so disproportioned to the horse, that they appear to
be an overload of themselves. The bridle envelopes
the head as complicatedly as the bandages on a
broken arm, crossing and recrossing, filled with
side latches and throat latches, and holding a bit
that might be mistaken for some ancient machine of
torture; attached to which are levers so powerful,
that a slight jerk would snap off any thing in the
world but the under jaw of a mustang pony. Mounted
by a rider that is as much a part of him as his hide,
he goes rollicking ahead, with the “eternal lope,”
such as an amorous deer assumes when it moves beside
its half galloping mate, a mixture of two or
three gaits, as easy as the motions of a cradle, and
in which may be traced some little of the stately
tramp of the Moorish Arabian, exhibited centuries
since upon the plains of the Alhambra, and pricked by
enormous spurs, that rattle with a tingling sound, of
which the mustang's sides, so far from resenting the
operation, seem to enjoy it as a dulled taste by luxuries
requires mustard and cayenne.

The origin of the cattle of the prairies is lost in
obscurity; but the wide-spreading horn, the heavy
leg, and predominance of black and white, carries
the mind back to the times when old Spain sent her
colonies, with their rich possessions, under Pizarro

and Cortez, into the western world. Their ancestors,
in the troublesome times of early conquest, breaking
away from the restraint of their owners, in course
of centuries have multiplied and spread from the
Californias to the Gulf of Mexico. The wide
savannas, with their elevated boundaries of rich
dividing country of two great oceans, warmed by a
tropical sun, and cooled by the mountain breeze,
and covered by never-failing vegetation, have multiplied
the cattle as the sands of the sea. Among
the vacheries of New Spain, they are killed for their
skins alone, their fat carcasses being left a prey to
the vulture and the wolf. Those that inhabit the
prairies of Attakappas and Opelousas are less wastefully
disposed of, as their bodies find a quick sale,
to sustain the constantly increasing population that
concentrates at the mouth of the great valley of the
Mississippi.

In the warm month of June, commences the
annual herding of the cattle. At a place fixed upon
as the herding ground, a few horsemen will drive
together fifty thousand head; and when once grouped
together in a solid mass, from a peculiar instinct, a
whole troop of cavalry could not again scatter them
over the plain. It may readily be imagined that this
work is not accomplished without incidents and
accidents. In the excitement of the drive, horses
fall, or run headlong over slow-footed cows, bulls
stop to joust, enraged mothers plunge madly with
their horns, in pursuit of their calves. A sulky ox
refuses to move in the proper direction; off starts a
rider, who catching the stubborn animal by the tail,

it at once becomes frightened into a lope; advantage
is taken of the unwieldy body, as it rests upon the
fore feet, to jerk it to the ground; before the ox has
recovered from its astonishment, a hair rope has been
passed through his nose, secured to the mustang
pony's tail, and it is led along subdued by pain.
A stampede sometimes seizes the herd, and then,
with upturned heads and glaring eyes, the animals
rush along, making the earth tremble beneath their
feet. Then it is that feats of horsemanship are performed
that would delight Bedouin Arabs. The
vacher, armed with an ash stick, some seven feet in
length, pointed at the end by a small three-cornered
file, scours ahead of the flying cattle, thrusting his
rude weapon against their rumps, rolling them over
as suddenly on the prairie as if they were shot. Or
with a whip, with a handle of a few inches long, and
a heavy raw-hide thong of eight feet, will he lash
their recking sides, drawing blood from the flesh as
with a knife. Should the drove however move kindly,
as they start in the morning so they remain until night,
the same plodders in the rear, the same lordly Andalusian
in the van. After the cattle have been at
the herding ground two or three days, their respective
owners separate them and drive them off to
brand. Upon the hind quarter is pressed the hot
iron that marks ownership and servility. This is
known and numbered as the wealth of the stock-raisers
of the prairies. The dowry of many a fair
bride is in cattle; the announcement of the birth of
a son or daughter gives rise to a gift, from some
kind uncle or doating aunt, to the new-comer, of perhaps
a single white heifer. When the little one is
grown up, it finds in the sacredly-kept increase a fair
start in the world, from which may result a fortune.
Through the prairies meander no running streams,
yet the cattle have beautiful reservoirs of water to
slake their impatient thirst. The ponds of the
prairies call forth the admiration, their beauty being
even excelled by the simple and perfect contrivance
for their formation. The low and marshy spots of
the prairie offer to the heated hoofs of the herd a
cooling place for their feet; crowded in dense masses
upon these places, their continual stepping indents
the turf. The rains, attracted by the predisposition
to moisture, accumulate in these “standing places,”
mix with the earth, which is wrought into well tempered
clay, and is in this form borne off upon the
hoofs of the cattle. As time rolls on, this constant
loss displays itself in the incipient basin: deepening
by degrees, its bottom finally grows impervious
and a pond is made, and thus they are multiplied
indefinitely as demanded. Perfectly round and
shelving gently to the centre, they soon become
skirted with richer and more varied foliage than is
elsewhere to be met with. The melumbium rests
its huge leaves for a shade upon the surface of the
water, and rears its beautiful flowers in the air as
an ornament. The smaller water lilies spring up
upon the margins of the ponds; even the wild violet
is hidden away among the rank grass. Here resort
the plover, the wild goose, and duck, and the delicately
plumed flamingo, that seems to have stolen
from the opening rose-bud its colour. The fruit of
the melumbium fattens the feathered vagrants, and
the clear field that surrounds these choice feeding
places protects them from the wiles of the sportsman.
In the depths of these ponds, among the tangled
roots and grasses, sports the gormandizing trout, the
beautiful perch, and soft-shell terrapin, as innocent
of snares as if there were no anglers or aldermen
in the world.

But the greatest pride of the Louisiana prairie is
the live oak. In these beautiful wastes, the little
acorn, that views with the thimble of the fair hand in
size, swells into a vast world of itself. It would
seem incredible, but from the knowledge of experience,
that in so small a germ so much beauty and
strength could originate. The little rivulet that
gurgles down some gentle declivity, and is obstructed
by the rolling stone, or falling limb of the
overhanging tree, turning into the proud swelling
river, bearing upon its surface the wealth of commerce,
and the rage of the driving storm, resembles
the oak, that from almost nothing becomes stately in
grandeur, and, unaffected, meets the rattling hail of
the cannon's mouth, and frowns defiance in the glare
of the lightning and the blasts of the hurricane.
The live oaks of the Louisiana prairie compare with
none but their own kindred which adorn the plains
that stretch away towards the tropics. In “merry old
England,” where the titled of the land, with a reverence
that smacks of the superstitions of the Druid
priests, look upon their gnarled oaks as their antiquities,
and trace back their history with the same pride
they do their own exalted race, they would almost fall

down and worship, could they see these wonders
of the new world, that overtop their favourites as the
Jura does the Alps. Among them, there are none
touched with age, or promising in youth; they all
seem to be rejoicing in their prime, and to stand
forth terrible in their strength; yet their waving
branches rustle as delicately as the brachen, and the
evergreen leaves glisten in the sun, and at a distance
from their delicacy appear like silken fringe.
Stand beside the mighty trunks!—behold the huge
columns of iron gray, how hard they look, and well
adapted to sustain the huge forest above them in the
air!—the gigantic limbs aspire to reach the horizon!—
how they have gracefully bent and bowed in their
onward course, and tapered off, almost imperceptibly,
to little stems! In those limbs we see the broad swell
of the seventy-four, and the ribs for her sides.

What a world is above you in the noble confusion!
what a rich mellowed light plays in the vernal shades!
The lively squirrel has found a speck in the bark
wherein to make its nest; and the delicate twig way
yonder, which bears that cluster of leaves, so far in
the clouds, hides beneath its quiverings the nest of
the little bird that will teach its happy young to
try their ambitious wings to fly through the broad
world within the body of the tree, resting their tiny
pinions by the way, as eagles do, when they soar
among the clouds and stoop upon the precipice.
Here, when the summer sun radiates from the heated
plain, and the dust flies from every step upon the
parched soil, come the cattle by thousands to cool
their burning sides in the never-failing shade, and, in

quiet repose, pass the noon of day. Nature, beautiful
in her economy, thus erects her sacred temples, for
the benefit of her creatures. Centuries before the
cattle that now rest so quietly beneath these oaks
came to our continent, the wild buffalo took their
place, and the wilder Indian was the keeper of the
vacheries. By whom and when was planted the
acorn? How came the magic seed so mysteriously
scattered over the vast field? What drew them to the
moist places, and buried them beside the watercourses?
and in the old times of their youth, who
were the dryads to preserve the tender plant from
the cud, or heavy crushing foot? Easy indeed is it,
in looking upon these wonderful exhibitions of nature,
reared up in so lovely places, open ever to the sunshine
and the storm, with no shade but from the
clouds, no ambitious rivals to retard their growth,
to imagine, in their first budding, they were the care
of fairy hands, and protected by guardian spirits,
until they grew into temples, whose foundations reach
deep into the earth, and whose canopy catches the
first rays of the morning sun.

Ho! for the prairies! those broad fields in the
arcana of nature, where the grasses and ground-flowers
revel, and their interlaced roots usurp the
soil, broad rolling waves of green earth that glisten
in the setting sun, as if they would turn a sparkling
ripple from their tops, and then settle down into quite
inland seas. Rich wastes, whereon the deer roam
as in a boundless park, and where the cattle herd
in stately pride swelling their sleek sides with never-failing
herbage,—where the horizon plays before

you in deceptive circles, seeming to sink from your
wearied footsteps as you move towards it;—grand
trysting-places of magnificent sport, where man and
beast, free from the crowded mart or thick-set forest
trees, perform their different parts on nature's grandest
stage, exulting in freedom.