THE TEXAN HUNTRESS. 281 



idiosyncracy of this case, as set forth, to be common to one 

 of the necessary stages of the inner life's development. Suf- 

 fice it ! To the frontier I did go, — and now for the story of 

 my adventurings there. 



The incidents I am about to give are some of them familiar 

 to leading men of Texas, though they have never been related 

 in print. On my way out I had stopped to visit at the house 

 of a friend, who was a planter, living high up on the Brazos 

 River. Our time was principally occupied in hunting. As I 

 had just arrived in the country, the abundant sport afforded 

 by the numbers and variety of the game, with which it might 

 be said literally to swarm, afforded a diversion to my morbid 

 feeling, and kept me in a continued state of eager excitement. 

 I was on my horse the greater part of the time. 



Though not a raw woodsman, so far as making my way 

 through the heavy forests of the West was concerned, yet 

 finding myself for the first time upon the vast and unaccus- 

 tomed expanse of the Southern Prairies, I was for a long 

 time surprised that though excessively reckless, I should be 

 here much perplexed, and even timid, in attempting to find 

 my way. 



The land-marks are so different, as well as the modes of 

 using them, from those to which I had been accustomed, that 

 I was frequently confused and overwhelmed with awe on 

 finding myself left in the vicissitudes of the hunt, alone amidst 

 the illimitable solitudes, with no experienced eye to see for 

 me the course, where all was trackless. 



When I would thus get " turned round," as it is called, 

 and the consciousness that I had lost my course, would drive 

 the blood to my heart : the startled sense of the revulsion is 

 difficult to describe. Body and soul would seem for a moment 

 as if sinking under the weight of a drear solemnity, and then 

 the returning blood would leap back to the brow, thrilling every 

 fibre with a shudder. A thousand Stories of bloody deaths 

 under the reeking scalping-knife of savage hordes, met in the 



