288 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTFRS. 



My horse apparently sympathized with my terror and 

 despair, for he rushed on with a frightened speed, which at 

 any other time would have been frightful, but now was only 

 congenial. I recognized no object that we passed each 

 melted into the other, forming on either hand a sort of back- 

 running liquefaction of mountain and tree, of plain and sky, 

 that seemed to be keeping time with my motion. I was 

 riding through a dim land, where nothing looked real but all 

 infinite where the end was I did not know. 



It was not long before I gained the open plain, upon which 

 there was, indeed, nothing but grass and horizon, but which 

 appeared to me the wide end of all things. It was like gal- 

 loping on clouds toward the moon or " the jumping-off place" 

 the distance seemed so inappreciable ! yet I urged on. 

 The grass sparrow chirped and flitted, I suppose, the deer 

 turned round to stare, no doubt, the partridge roared its 

 sudden under-bass of wings and skimmed away, bending the 

 grass-tops with its windy whirr, for all I know, but yet I saw 

 them not but as we see swift shadows in a stormy dream. I 

 shouted like a crazy man. 



I fired my other pistol in the air, in the hope that some 

 of the party of hunters might hear it then I paused to 

 listen. My frightened and impatient horse would chafe and 

 plunge for a moment, and again, as if divining why I paused, 

 would be still as death ; and now with pricked ears, pointed 

 stiffly here and there, seem listening round him for a sound 

 and then would snuff the breeze with his wide, eager nostrils, 

 and with an impulse, headlong and impatient as my own, 

 bound onward as the steady, winging raven that followed, 

 over head, our course, croaked an answer that sounded so 

 like self-congratulation. 



Away ! away ! away ! and still no sight and still no sound 

 that came to us with any promise a herd of mustangs would 

 scurry off, snorting as we passed a squad of buffaloes, wheel- 

 ing sharp about, and like hogsheads inspired of hoofs, with 



