288 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTPRS. 



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-ofi' 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 



