282 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



wide wilderness of plains ; of confused circlings day by day, 

 always bringing the victim back to his own trail, until the 

 dreary, lingering death of starvation relieved the bewilder- 

 ment ; of banded wolves with gaping jaws, hungry yells and 

 tireless feet, pursuing the uncertain flight which has be- 

 trayed to their ferocious instinct a sure prey in the lost man ; 

 of grim, creeping panthers springing from the thicket upon 

 the deep sleep of his fruitless exhaustion ; of the wild, vague 

 and unutterable horror of lonely, unavenged and unrecorded 

 death in a thousand forms, until self-possession reeled, and 

 the mad impulse was to strike spurs into my horse and plunge 

 blindly on amidst them all. 



This singular sensation gradually loses its intensity, when, 

 by a series of happy accidents, rather than instincts, we gain 

 more confidence, and it requires a less forlorn struggle to 

 recall ourselves to calmness and the cool consideration of the 

 position in which we are thrown. 



But let there be as many lessons as can well be crowded 

 into a year or two of such wild experiences, yet he is a man 

 of very strong nerve who can, even then, draw up his horse, 

 after a heated chase of buffalo, deer, or wolf, or bear, and 

 not feel much of this appalled startle when, the slaughter 

 over, he looks around with aching eyes for the first time to 

 see where he is. 



A sinking sense of loneliness and awe is the reaction of the 

 fierce and headlong excitement, under which he has been 

 hurled, as it were, he knows not in what direction, or how 

 far. He gazes around him in breathless silence and name- 

 less dread for awhile ; the contrast of the stilless, now that 

 death has intervened, with the crashing, raging impetus which 

 brought him here, is too oppressive, and he dares not make a 

 sound ; he almost shudders while the dim consciousness that 

 he has just done murder in the sight of his peaceful mother, 

 Earth, comes over him reproachfully amidst her voiceless 

 calms ; and the whole forest, with its straight stems, the broad 



