Again the scene changes. I am among greenswards and bright flowers; but
the view is broken by groves and clumps of copse-wood. The frondage is
varied, its tints are vivid, its outlines soft and graceful. As I move
forward, new landscapes open up continuously: views park-like and
picturesque. Gangs of buffalo, herds of antelope, and droves of wild
horses, mottle the far vistas. Turkeys run into the coppice, and
pheasants whirr up from the path.
Where are the owners of these lands, of these flocks and fowls? Where
are the houses, the palaces, that should appertain to these lordly
parks? I look forward, expecting to see the turrets of tall mansions
spring up over the groves. But no. For hundreds of miles around no
chimney sends forth its smoke. Although with a cultivated aspect, this
region is only trodden by the moccasined foot of the hunter, and his
enemy, the Red Indian.
These are the _mottes_--the "islands" of the prairie sea.
I am in the deep forest. It is night, and the log fire throws out its
vermilion glare, painting the objects that surround our bivouac. Huge
trunks stand thickly around us; and massive limbs, grey and giant-like,
stretch out and over. I notice the bark. It is cracked, and clings in
broad scales crisping outward. Long snake-like parasites creep from
tree to tree, coiling the trunks as though they were serpents, and would
crush them! There are no leaves overhead. They have ripened and
fallen; but the white Spanish moss, festooned along the branches, hangs
weeping down like the drapery of a deathbed.
Prostrate trunks, yards in diameter and half-decayed, lie along the
ground. Their ends exhibit vast cavities where the porcupine and
opossum have taken shelter from the cold.
My comrades, wrapped in their blankets, and stretched upon the dead
leaves, have gone to sleep. They lie with their feet to the fire, and
their heads resting in the hollow of their saddles. The horses,
standing around a tree, and tied to its lower branches, seem also to
sleep. I am awake and listening. The wind is high up, whistling among
the twigs and causing the long white streamers to oscillate. It utters
a wild and melancholy music. There are few other sounds, for it is
winter, and the tree-frog and cicada are silent. I hear the crackling
knots in the fire, the rustling of dry leaves swirled up by a stray
gust, the "coo-whoo-a" of the white owl, the bark of the raccoon, and,
at intervals, the dismal howling of wolves. These are the nocturnal
voices of the winter forest. They are savage sounds; yet there is a
chord in my bosom that vibrates under their influence, and my spirit is
tinged with romance as I lie and listen.
The forest in autumn; still bearing its full frondage. The leaves
resemble flowers, so bright are their hues. They are red and yellow,
and golden and brown. The woods are warm and glorious now, and the
birds flutter among the laden branches. The eye wanders delighted down
long vistas and over sunlit glades. It is caught by the flashing of
gaudy plumage, the golden green of the paroquet, the blue of the jay,
and the orange wing of the oriole. The red-bird flutters lower down in
the coppice of green pawpaws, or amidst the amber leaflets of the
beechen thicket. Hundreds of tiny wings flit through the openings,
twinkling in the sun like the glancing of gems.
The air is filled with music: sweet sounds of love. The bark of the
squirrel, the cooing of mated doves, the "rat-ta-ta" of the pecker, and
the constant and measured chirrup of the cicada, are all ringing
together. High up, on a topmost twig, the mocking-bird pours forth his
mimic note, as though he would shame all other songsters into silence.
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I am in a country of brown barren earth and broken outlines. There are
rocks and clefts and patches of sterile soil. Strange vegetable forms
grow in the clefts and hang over the rocks. Others are spheroidal in
shape, resting upon the surface of the parched earth. Others rise
vertically to a great height, like carved and fluted columns. Some
throw out branches, crooked, shaggy branches, with hirsute oval leaves.
Yet there is a homogeneousness about all these vegetable forms, in their
colour, in their fruit and flowers, that proclaims them of one family.
They are cacti. It is a forest of the Mexican nopal. Another singular
plant is here. It throws out long, thorny leaves that curve downward.
It is the agave, the far-famed mezcal-plant of Mexico. Here and there,
mingling with the cacti, are trees of acacia and mezquite, the denizens
of the desert-land. No bright object relieves the eye; no bird pours
its melody into the ear. The lonely owl flaps away into the impassable
thicket, the rattlesnake glides under its scanty shade, and the coyote
skulks through its silent glades.
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I have climbed mountain after mountain, and still I behold peaks soaring
far above, crowned with the snow that never melts. I stand upon
beetling cliffs, and look into chasms that yawn beneath, sleeping in the
silence of desolation. Great fragments have fallen into them, and lie
piled one upon another. Others hang threatening over, as if waiting for
some concussion of the atmosphere to hurl them from their balance. Dark
precipices frown me into fear, and my head reels with a dizzy faintness.
I hold by the pine-tree shaft, or the angle of the firmer rock.
Above, and below, and around me, are mountains piled on mountains in
chaotic confusion. Some are bald and bleak; others exhibit traces of
vegetation in the dark needles of the pine and cedar, whose stunted
forms half-grow, half-hang from the cliffs. Here, a cone-shaped peak
soars up till it is lost in snow and clouds. There, a ridge elevates
its sharp outline against the sky; while along its side, lie huge
boulders of granite, as though they had been hurled from the hands of
Titan giants!
A fearful monster, the grizzly bear, drags his body along the high
ridges; the carcajou squats upon the projecting rock, waiting the elk
that must pass to the water below; and the bighorn bounds from crag to
crag in search of his shy mate. Along the pine branch the bald buzzard
whets his filthy beak; and the war-eagle, soaring over all, cuts sharply
against the blue field of the heavens.
These are the Rocky Mountains, the American Andes, the colossal
vertebras of the continent!
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Such are the aspects of the wild west; such is the scenery of our drama.
Let us raise the curtain, and bring on the characters.