The Scalp Hunters | Page 2

around no chimney
sends forth its smoke. Although with a cultivated aspect, this region is
only trodden by the moccasined foot of the hunter, and his enemy, the
Red Indian.
These are the mottes--the "islands" of the prairie sea.
I am in the deep forest. It is night, and the log fire throws out its
vermilion glare, painting the objects that surround our bivouac. Huge
trunks stand thickly around us; and massive limbs, grey and giant-like,
stretch out and over. I notice the bark. It is cracked, and clings in broad
scales crisping outward. Long snake-like parasites creep from tree to
tree, coiling the trunks as though they were serpents, and would crush
them! There are no leaves overhead. They have ripened and fallen; but
the white Spanish moss, festooned along the branches, hangs weeping
down like the drapery of a deathbed.

Prostrate trunks, yards in diameter and half-decayed, lie along the
ground. Their ends exhibit vast cavities where the porcupine and
opossum have taken shelter from the cold.
My comrades, wrapped in their blankets, and stretched upon the dead
leaves, have gone to sleep. They lie with their feet to the fire, and their
heads resting in the hollow of their saddles. The horses, standing
around a tree, and tied to its lower branches, seem also to sleep. I am
awake and listening. The wind is high up, whistling among the twigs
and causing the long white streamers to oscillate. It utters a wild and
melancholy music. There are few other sounds, for it is winter, and the
tree-frog and cicada are silent. I hear the crackling knots in the fire, the
rustling of dry leaves swirled up by a stray gust, the "coo-whoo-a" of
the white owl, the bark of the raccoon, and, at intervals, the dismal
howling of wolves. These are the nocturnal voices of the winter forest.
They are savage sounds; yet there is a chord in my bosom that vibrates
under their influence, and my spirit is tinged with romance as I lie and
listen.
The forest in autumn; still bearing its full frondage. The leaves
resemble flowers, so bright are their hues. They are red and yellow, and
golden and brown. The woods are warm and glorious now, and the
birds flutter among the laden branches. The eye wanders delighted
down long vistas and over sunlit glades. It is caught by the flashing of
gaudy plumage, the golden green of the paroquet, the blue of the jay,
and the orange wing of the oriole. The red-bird flutters lower down in
the coppice of green pawpaws, or amidst the amber leaflets of the
beechen thicket. Hundreds of tiny wings flit through the openings,
twinkling in the sun like the glancing of gems.
The air is filled with music: sweet sounds of love. The bark of the
squirrel, the cooing of mated doves, the "rat-ta-ta" of the pecker, and
the constant and measured chirrup of the cicada, are all ringing together.
High up, on a topmost twig, the mocking-bird pours forth his mimic
note, as though he would shame all other songsters into silence.
I am in a country of brown barren earth and broken outlines. There are
rocks and clefts and patches of sterile soil. Strange vegetable forms

grow in the clefts and hang over the rocks. Others are spheroidal in
shape, resting upon the surface of the parched earth. Others rise
vertically to a great height, like carved and fluted columns. Some throw
out branches, crooked, shaggy branches, with hirsute oval leaves. Yet
there is a homogeneousness about all these vegetable forms, in their
colour, in their fruit and flowers, that proclaims them of one family.
They are cacti. It is a forest of the Mexican nopal. Another singular
plant is here. It throws out long, thorny leaves that curve downward. It
is the agave, the far-famed mezcal-plant of Mexico. Here and there,
mingling with the cacti, are trees of acacia and mezquite, the denizens
of the desert-land. No bright object relieves the eye; no bird pours its
melody into the ear. The lonely owl flaps away into the impassable
thicket, the rattlesnake glides under its scanty shade, and the coyote
skulks through its silent glades.
I have climbed mountain after mountain, and still I behold peaks
soaring far above, crowned with the snow that never melts. I stand
upon beetling cliffs, and look into chasms that yawn beneath, sleeping
in the silence of desolation. Great fragments have fallen into them, and
lie piled one upon another. Others hang threatening over, as if waiting
for some concussion of the atmosphere to hurl them from their balance.
Dark precipices frown me into fear, and my head reels with a dizzy
faintness. I hold by the pine-tree shaft, or the angle of the firmer rock.
Above, and below,