162 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



hickory trees, and despatched Martin, Carleton's Aca- 

 dian servant, upon a voyage of discovery. lie had 

 assured us that we must ere long fall in with some 

 party of Americans or Cochon Yankees, as he called 

 them who, in spite of the hatred borne them by the 

 Acadians and Creoles, were daily becoming more 

 numerous in the country. 



After waiting, in anxious expectation of Martin's 

 return, for a full hour, during which the air seemed 

 to get more and more sultry, my companion began to 

 wax impatient. " What can the fellow be about 1 " 

 cried he. " Give a blast on the horn," he added, 

 handing me the instrument ; " I cannot sound it 

 myself, for my tongue cleaves to my palate from 

 heat and drought." 



I put the horn to my mouth and gave a blast ; 

 but the tones emitted were not the clear echo- 

 awakening sounds that cheer and strengthen the 

 hunter. They were dull and short, as though the 

 air had lost all elasticity and vibration, and by its 

 weight crushed back the sounds into the horn. It 

 was a warning of some inscrutable danger. We 

 gazed around us, and saw that others were not 

 wanting. 



The spot where we had halted was on the edge of 

 one of those pine forests that extend, almost without 

 interruption, from the hills of the Cote Gelee to the 

 Opelousa mountains, and of a vast prairie, sprinkled 

 here and there with palmetto fields, clumps of trees, 



