The earth offers no aspect more drear and desolate than that of a burnt
prairie. The ocean when its waves are grey--a blighted heath--a flat
fenny country under a rapid thaw--all these impress the beholder with a
feeling of chill monotony; but the water has motion, the heath, colour,
and the half-thawed flat exhibits variety in its mottling of white and
ground.
Not so the steppe that has been fired and burned. In this, the eye
perceives neither colour, nor form, nor motion. It roams over the
limitless level in search of one or other, but in vain; and in the
absence of all three, it tires, and the heart grows cheerless and sick.
Even the sky scarcely offers relief. It, too, by refraction from the
black surface beneath, wears a dull livid aspect; or perhaps the eye,
jaundiced by the reflection of the earth, beholds not the brightness of
the heavens.
A prairie, when green, does not always glad the eye,--not even when
enamelled with fairest flowers. I have crossed such plains, verdant or
blooming to the utmost verge of vision, and longed for _something_ to
appear _in sight_--a rock, tree, a living creature--anything to relieve
the universal sameness; just as the voyager on the ample ocean longs for
ships, for _cetaceae_, or the sight of land, and is delighted with a
nautilus, polypi, phosphorescence, or a floating weed.
Colour alone does not satisfy the sense. What hue more charming than
the fresh verdure of the grassy plain? what more exquisite than the deep
blue of the ocean? and yet the eye grows aweary of both! Even the
"flower-prairie," with its thousands of gay corollas of every tint and
shade--with its golden helianthus, its white argemone, its purple
cleome, its pink malvaceae, its blue lupin--its poppy worts of red and
orange--even these fair tints grow tiresome to the sight, and the eye
yearns for form and motion.
If so, what must be the prairie when divested of all these verdant and
flowery charms--when burned to black ashes? It is difficult to conceive
the aspect of dreary monotony it then presents--more difficult to
describe it. Words will not paint such a scene.
And such presented itself to our eyes as we rode out from the chapparal.
The fire was past--even the smoke had ceased to ascend--except in spots
where the damp earth still reeked under the heat--but right and left,
and far ahead, on to the very hem of the horizon, the surface was of one
uniform hue, as if covered with a vast crape. There was nought of form
to be seen, living or lifeless; there was neither life nor motion, even
in the elements; all sounds had ceased: an awful stillness reigned above
and around--the world seemed dead and shrouded in a vast sable pall!
Under other circumstances, I might have stayed to regard such a scene,
though not to admire it. On that interminable waste, there was nought
to be admired, not even sublimity; but no spectacle, however sublime,
however beautiful, could have won from me a thought at that moment.
The trackers had already ridden far out, and were advancing, half
concealed by the cloud of black "stoor" flung up from the heels of their
horses.
For some distance, they moved straight on, without looking for the
tracks of the steed. Before meeting the fire, they had traced them
beyond the edge of the chapparal, and therefore knew the direction.
After a while, I observed them moving more slowly, with their eyes upon
the ground as if they had lost it, I had doubts of their being able
either to find or follow it now. The shallow hoof-prints would be
filled with the debris of the burnt herbage--surely they could no longer
be traced?
By myself, they could not, nor by a common man; but it seemed that to
the eyes of those keen hunters, the trail was as conspicuous as ever. I
saw that, after searching a few seconds, they had taken it up, and were
once more moving along, guided by the tracks.
Some slight hollows I could perceive, distributed here and there over
the ground, and scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding level.
Certainly, without having been told what they were, I should not have
known them to be the tracks of a horse.
It proved a wide prairie, and we seemed to be crossing its central part.
The fire had spread far.
At one place, nearly midway, where the trail was faint, and difficult to
make out, we stopped for a short while to give the trackers time. A
momentary curiosity induced me to gaze around. Awful was the scene--
awful without sublimity. Even the thorny chapparal no longer relieved
the eye; the outline of its low shrubbery had sunk below the horizon;
and on all sides stretched the charred plain up to the rim of the leaden
canopy, black--black--illimitable. Had I been alone, I might easily
have yielded to the fancy, that the world was dead.
Gazing over this vast opacity, I for a moment forgot my companions, and
fell into a sort of lethargic stupor. I fancied that I too was dead or
dreaming--I fancied that I was in hell--the Avernus of the ancients. In
my youth, I had the misfortune to be well schooled in classic lore--to
the neglect of studies more useful--and often in life have the poetical
absurdities of Greek and Latin mythology intruded themselves upon my
spirit--both asleep and awake. I fancied, therefore, that some
well-meaning Anchises had introduced me to the regions below; and that
the black plain before me was some landscape in the kingdom of Pluto.
Reflection--had I been capable of that--would have convinced me of my
error. No part of that monarch's dominions can be so thinly peopled.
I was summoned to reason again by the voices of my followers. The lost
trail had been found, and they were moving on.