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Show 354 THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON TRAIL. as night, ~II revealed for an instant, and then disappearing from the vrew. One could not but recall the stanza of Childe :Harold: 'Morn dawns, and with it stern Albania 's hills Dark Suli's rocks, and Pindus ' inlanrl peak, ' R obed half in mist, bedewed with snowy rills, Array 'd in many a dun and purple streak, Arise ; and, as th o clouds along them break, Di close the dwelling of the moun taineer: Il ere roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak, Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear, And gathering storms arounu convulse the closing year.' Every line save one of this description was more than verified here. There were no 'dwellj ngs of the mountaineer' among these heights. Fierce savages, restlessly wandering through summer and winter, alone invade them. 'Their hand is against every man, and every man's hand against them.' • On the day after, we had left the mountains at some distance. A black cloud descended upon them, and a tremendous explosion of thunder followed, reverberating among the precipices. In a few moments every thing grew black, and the rain poured down like a cataract. We got under an old cotton-wood tree, which stood by the side of a stream, and waited there till the rage of the torrent had passed. The clouds opened at the point where they first had gathered, and the whole sublime congregation of mountains was bathed at once in warm sunshine. They seemed more like some luxurious vision of eastern romance than like a reality of that wilderness; all were melted together into a soft d l' . e ICrous blue, as voluptuous as the sky of Naples or the trans- THE LONELY JOURNEY. 355 parent sea that washes the sunny cliffs of Capri. On the left the whole sky was still of an inky blackness; but two concentric rainbows stood in brilliant relief against it, w bile far in front the ragged cloud still streamed before the wind, and the retreating thunder muttered angrily. Through that afternoon and the next morning we were passing down the banks of the stream, called ' La Fontaine qui Bouille,' from the boiling spring whose waters flow into it. When we stopped at noon, we were within six or eight miles of the Pueblo. Setting out again, we found by the fresh tracks that a horseman had just been out to reconnoitre us ; he had circled half round the camp, and then galloped back full speed for the Pueblo. What made him so shy of us we could not conceive. After an hour's ride we reached the edge of a hill, from which a welcome sight greeted us. The Arkansas ran along the valley below, among woods and groves, and closely nestled in the midst of wide corn-fields and green meadows where cattle were grazing, rose the low mud walls of the Pueblo. |