258 SPOKT IN NORTH AMERICA. 



when the eye seeks in vain for the limits of that 

 boundless space. Not a tree, not a mountain, to 

 break the line of the horizon; the heavens them- 

 selves wear a grey and monotonous tint, when they 

 are not charged with the heavy clouds which be- 

 token the fearful storms which sweep across these 

 solitudes, and overturn whatever opposes them. 

 The wind then roars as in a mistral ; and in the 

 winter a fine icy snow takes the place of the rain, 

 and covers the prairie with a spotless winding- 

 sheet. 



During the three fine seasons of the year, the 

 buffaloes, deer, and wild horses range at ^^dll over 

 these verdant solitudes, and thither also come 

 various tribes of Red Skins, who divide the vast ter- 

 ritory into hunting-grounds amongst them. Thither 

 come the Osages, the Delaware Indians, the Creeks, 

 the Cherokees, and some other tribes whose man- 

 ners have been somewhat softened by contact with 

 civilisation ; and thither also come the Pawnees, 

 the Comauches, and other warlike and still indepen- 

 dent tribes, nomads of the prairies and of the Rocky 

 Mountains. 



The territory which I have been describing be- 

 longs, in fact, to none of these tribes ; but, by a 

 tacit arrangement amongst them, they have assumed 

 the usufruct of the country, and share the right of 

 hunting. Yet this understanding is by no means 

 so exactly respected but that the various tribes 



