The Prairie Read Free

only known to such adventurers, across glen and torrent, over
deep morasses and arid wastes, to a point far beyond the usual limits of
civilised habitations. In their front were stretched those broad plains,
which extend, with so little diversity of character, to the bases of the
Rocky Mountains; and many long and dreary miles in their rear, foamed
the swift and turbid waters of La Platte.
    The appearance of such a train, in that bleak and solitary place, was
rendered the more remarkable by the fact, that the surrounding country
offered so little, that was tempting to the cupidity of speculation,
and, if possible, still less that was flattering to the hopes of an
ordinary settler of new lands.
    The meagre herbage of the prairie, promised nothing, in favour of a hard
and unyielding soil, over which the wheels of the vehicles rattled as
lightly as if they travelled on a beaten road; neither wagons nor beasts
making any deeper impression, than to mark that bruised and withered
grass, which the cattle plucked, from time to time, and as often
rejected, as food too sour, for even hunger to render palatable.
    Whatever might be the final destination of these adventurers, or the
secret causes of their apparent security in so remote and unprotected
a situation, there was no visible sign of uneasiness, uncertainty, or
alarm, among them. Including both sexes, and every age, the number of
the party exceeded twenty.
    At some little distance in front of the whole, marched the individual,
who, by his position and air, appeared to be the leader of the band. He
was a tall, sun-burnt, man, past the middle age, of a dull countenance
and listless manner. His frame appeared loose and flexible; but it
was vast, and in reality of prodigious power. It was, only at moments,
however, as some slight impediment opposed itself to his loitering
progress, that his person, which, in its ordinary gait seemed so
lounging and nerveless, displayed any of those energies, which lay
latent in his system, like the slumbering and unwieldy, but terrible,
strength of the elephant. The inferior lineaments of his countenance
were coarse, extended and vacant; while the superior, or those nobler
parts which are thought to affect the intellectual being, were low,
receding and mean.
    The dress of this individual was a mixture of the coarsest vestments of
a husbandman with the leathern garments, that fashion as well as use,
had in some degree rendered necessary to one engaged in his present
pursuits. There was, however, a singular and wild display of prodigal
and ill judged ornaments, blended with his motley attire. In place of
the usual deer-skin belt, he wore around his body a tarnished silken
sash of the most gaudy colours; the buck-horn haft of his knife was
profusely decorated with plates of silver; the marten's fur of his cap
was of a fineness and shadowing that a queen might covet; the buttons
of his rude and soiled blanket-coat were of the glittering coinage of
Mexico; the stock of his rifle was of beautiful mahogany, riveted and
banded with the same precious metal, and the trinkets of no less than
three worthless watches dangled from different parts of his person.
In addition to the pack and the rifle which were slung at his back,
together with the well filled, and carefully guarded pouch and horn,
he had carelessly cast a keen and bright wood-axe across his shoulder,
sustaining the weight of the whole with as much apparent ease, as if he
moved, unfettered in limb, and free from incumbrance.
    A short distance in the rear of this man, came a group of youths very
similarly attired, and bearing sufficient resemblance to each other,
and to their leader, to distinguish them as the children of one family.
Though the youngest of their number could not much have passed the
period, that, in the nicer judgment of the law, is called the age of
discretion, he had proved himself so far worthy of his progenitors as
to have reared already his aspiring person to the standard height