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Show 1836- 1837] F/ agg's Far West 339 the shaggy forest in the back- ground, tossing its heavy branches against the troubled sky, [ 90] roared forth a deep chorus to the storm. It was a wild night, and so complete was the illusion that, in the fitful hillings of the tempest, one almost imagined himself on the ocean- beach, listening to the confused weltering of the surge. There was much of high sublimity in all this; and hours passed away before the traveller, weary as he was, could quiet his mind to slumber. There are seasons when every chord, and nerve, and sinew of the system seems wound up to its severest tension; and a morbid, unnatural excitement broods over the mind, forbidding all approach to quietude. Every one has experienced this under peculiar circumstances; few can describe it. The night wore tediously away, and at the dawn the traveller was again in the saddle, pushing forth like a " pilgrim- bark" upon the swelling ocean- waste, sweeping even to the broad curve of undulating horizon beyond. There is always something singularly unpleasant in the idea of going out upon one of these vast prairies alone; and such the sense of utter loneliness, that the solitary traveller never fails to cast back a lingering gaze upon the last low tenement he is leaving. The winds were still up, and the rack and clouds were scudding in wild confusion along the darkened sky; " Here, flying loosely ss the mine Of a young war- hone in the blast; There, rolTd in masses dark and swelling, As proud to be the thunder's dwelling!" From time to time a heavy blast would come careering [ 91] with resistless fury along the heaving plain, almost tearing the rider from his horse. The celebrated " Grand Prairie," upon which I was now entering, stretched itself away to the south thirty miles, a vast, unbroken meadow; and one |