: The Pirates of the Prairies: Adventures in the American Desert by Aimard Gustave Wraxall Lascelles Sir Translator - Fiction; Western stories

@FreeBooksWed 07 Jun, 2023

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THE CACHE.

Two months have elapsed since we left the Trail-Hunter commencing his adventurous journey, and we are in the heart of the desert. Before us immensity is unfolded. What pen, however eloquent, would venture to describe those illimitable oceans of verdure to which the North Americans have in their imagery, given the poetic and mysterious name of the Far West? That is to say, the truly unknown region, with its scenes at once grand and striking, soft and terrible; unbounded prairies in which may be found that rich and luxuriant Flora, against whose magic growth only the Indian can successfully struggle.

These plains, at the first glance, offer the dazzled eye of the rash traveller who ventures on them a vast carpet of verdure embossed with flowers, furrowed by large streams; and they appear of a desperate regularity, mingling in the horizon with the azure of the sky.

It is only by degrees, when the sight grows accustomed to the picture, that, gradually mastering the details, the visitor notices here and there rather lofty hills, the escarped sides of the water courses, and a thousand unexpected accidents which agreeably break that monotony by which the eye is at first saddened, and which the lofty grass and the giant productions of the Flora completely conceal.

How can we enumerate the products of this primitive nature, which form an inextricable confusion and interlacement, describing majestic curves, producing grand arcades, and offering, in a word, the most splendid and sublime spectacle it was ever given to man to admire through its eternal contrasts and striking harmony?

Then, there are immense fields of dahlias, flowers whiter than the snows of the Caffre de Perote or the Chimborazo, or redder than blood, immense lianas twining and circling round the stems of trees and vines overflowing with sap; and in the midst of this inextricable chaos fly, run, and crawl, in every direction, animals of all sorts and sizes, birds, quadrupeds, reptiles, amphibious, singing, crying, howling and roaring with every note of the human gamut, some mocking and menacing, others soft and melancholy.

In the highest regions of air, hovering in long circles over the prairie, the eagle of the Sierra Madre, with wide-spread wings, and the bald-headed vulture, select the prey on which they dart with the rapidity of lightning.

This child of the desert, so grand, so noble, and so disdainful of peril, who crosses the prairies with incredible speed, and knows its thousand turnings, is truly the king of this strange country, which he alone can traverse night and day, and whose countless dangers he does not fear. He struggles inch by inch with that European civilisation which is slowly advancing, driving him into his last intrenchments and invading his lands on all sides.

Hence, woe to the trapper or hunter who ventures to traverse these prairies alone! His bones will bleach on the plain, and his scalp adorn the shield of an Indian chief, or the mane of his horse.

Such is the sublime, striking, and terrible spectacle the Far West offers even at the present day.

The day on which we resume our story, at the moment when the sun attained its zenith, the mournful silence brooding over the desert was suddenly troubled by a slight sound, which was heard in the tufted clumps that border the Rio Gila, in one of the most unknown districts of this solitude.

The branches were cautiously parted, and amid the leaves and creepers a man displayed his face dripping with perspiration, and marked with an expression of terror and despair.

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