468 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTBES. 



through a glass, has presented rather, the grace and playful 

 action of their Hves, than this fierce scene. 



The colors of the mustang are . surpassingly rich and 

 beautiful. They are all intense and decided. You will 

 find them white as the driven snow, without a dark hair on 

 their bodies; and again, black as the. concentrated essence 

 of midnight-^the sunbeams 



" Smoothing the ebon down of darkness till it smiled," 



at every movement of their buoyant humors ; then a deep 

 blood bay, with black mane and tail, or a rich red sorrel. 

 Again, you find these dark colors mottled in clear relief 

 upon the pure white. The effect is sometimes exquisite 

 beyond description. I have seen them "spotted like a 

 Pard," and marked in elegant rosettes like the skin of the 

 African panther. The startling contrast of these deep colors, 

 in graceful lines, banded and star'd, flecked and dotted, upon 

 the snowy ground, is above the " Ken of Fancie," beautiful. 



The Comanches — Nomadic tribes, who from their mountain 

 fastness descend upon the plains below for plunder — like 

 birds of prey stooping from their eyries, are mounted upon 

 the finest specimens of these horses that are to be found, 

 and with such rapidity do they move, that they will traverse 

 hundreds of miles, carrying death and fear with them along 

 a whole frontier, and yet retreat to their rocky holds in 

 safety before the inhabitants can organize a pursuit. 



The warriors have a great passion for these " paint horses" 

 as they are called, and if I live to the age of Methuselah, I 

 shall never forget the picturesque appearance of a party of 

 twenty of them we pursued once for fifteen miles, all of 

 whom were mounted upon fancifully mottled horses. Over 

 the prairie and through the deep woods we scurried in that 

 wild desperate chase — the dark gaunt savage forms on their 

 snowy and freckled steeds, now and then to b(3 seen ahead 



