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Show • 42 THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON TRAIL. feeling of infinite satisfaction picked up the slimy trail-rope, and twisted it three times round my hand. 'Now let me see you get away again!' I thought, as I rmnounted. But Pontiac was exceedingly reluctant to turn back ; Hendrick too, who had evidently flattered himself with vain hopes, showed the utmost repugnance, and grumbled in a manner peculiar to hirnself at being compelled to face about. A smart cut of the whip restored his cheerfulness; and dragging the recovered truant behind, I set out in search of the camp. An hour or two elapsed, when, near sunset, I saw the tents, standing on a rich swell of the prairie, beyond a line of woods, w bile the bands of horses were feeding in a low meadow close at hand. There sat Jack C , cross-legged, in the sun, splicing a trailrope, and the rest were lying on the grass, s1noking and telling stories. That night we enjoyed a serenade from the wolves, more lively than any with which they had yet favored us; and in the morning one of the musicians appeared, not many rods from the tents, quietly seated amona the horses lookino· at us 0 ' 0 with a pair of large gray eyes; but perceiving a rifle levelled . at him, he leaped up and made off in hot haste. I pass by the following day or two of our journey, for nothing occurred worthy of record. Should any one of my readers ever be impelled to visit the prairies, and should he choose the route of the Platte, (the best, perhaps, that can be adopted,) I can assure him that he need not think to enter at once upon the paradise of his imagination. A dreary preliminary, protracted crossing of the threshold, a waits him before he finds himself fairly upon the verge of tho 'great American desert ; ' those barren wastes, the haunts of the buffalo and the Indian, where the very shadow of civilization 'JUMPING OFF.' 43 lies a hundred leagues behind him. The intervening country, the wide and fertile belt that extends for several hundred miles beyond the extren1e frontier, will probably answer tolerably well to his preconceived ideas of the prairie ; for this it is from which picturesque tourists, painters, poets and novelists, who have seldom penetrated farther, have derived their conceptions of the whole region. If he has a painter's eye, he may find his period of probation not wholly void of interest. The scenery, though tame, is graceful and pleasing. I-Iere are level plains, too wide for the eye to measure ; green undulations, like motionless swells of the ocean; abundance of streams, followed through all their windings by lines of woods and scattered groves. But let him be as enthusiastic as he may, he will find enough to damp his ardor. I-Iis wagons will stick in the mud ; his horses will break loose ; harness will give way, and axle-trees prove unsound. Hi::j bed will be a soft one, consisting often of black mud, of the richest consistency. As for food, he must content himself with biscuit and salt provisions ; for strange as it may seem, this tract of country pro. duces very little game. As he advances, indeed, he will see, 1nouldering in the grass by his path, the vast antlers of the elk, and fariber on, the whitened skulls of the buffalo, once swanning over this now deserted region. Perhaps, like us, he may journey for a fortnight, and see not so much as the hoof-print of a deer ; in the spring, not even a prairie-hen is to be had. Yet, to compensate him for this unlooked-for deficiency of game he will find himself beset with 'varmints' innumerable. The wolves will entertain him with a concerto at night, and skulk around him by day, just beyond rifle-shot; his horse will step into badger-holes; from every marsh and mudpuddle will |
