BOOT AND SADDLE!
The great desert del Norte is the American Sahara—more extensive, more to be feared, than the African Sahara; for it contains no laughing oases, sheltered by fine trees, and refreshed by sparkling fountains. Beneath a coppery sky extend immense plains, covered with a dirty-greyish sand; in every direction horizons succeed horizons; sand, ever sand, fine impalpable sand, bearing a closer resemblance with human dust, which the wind carries aloft in long whirlwinds, whose desolating aspect varies incessantly at the will of the tempest, which hollows out valleys and throws up hills each time the fearful cordonazo howls across this desolate soil.
Greyish rocks, covered with patches of parched lichen, at times lift up their stunted crests in the midst of this chaos, which has not changed its appearance since the creation. The buffalo, the ashata, the swift-footed antelope, shun this desert, where their feet would only rest on a shifting soil; flocks of blear-eyed and ill-omened vultures alone soar over these regions in search of extremely rare prey for the desert is so horrible that the Indians themselves enter on it with a tremour, and cross it with express speed when they return to their villages after a foray on the Mexican territory. And yet, however rapid their journey may be, their passage is marked in an indelible manner by the skeletons of mules and horses which they are compelled to abandon, and whose bones blanch in the desert, until the hurricane, again unchained, covers all with a cerecloth of sand.
Still, as the hand of Deity is everywhere visible, in the desert more profoundly than elsewhere, there spring up at long intervals, and half buried in the sand, in the midst of piled up rocks, vigorous trees, with enormous trunks and immense foliage, which seem to offer the traveller rest beneath their shade. But these trees grow few and far between on the plain, and two are rarely found together at the same spot. These trees, revered by the Indians and wood rangers, are the imprint of Providence on the desert, the proof of His solicitude and inexhaustible goodness. But we repeat it, with the exception of these few landmarks, lost like imperceptible dots in the immensity, there are neither animals nor vegetables on the Del Norte: sand, and naught but sand.
The Casa Grande of Moctecuhzoma, where the Count de Lhorailles' free company was encamped, rose, and probably still rises, at the extreme limit of the prairie, at not more than two leagues from the skirt of the desert. The line of demarcation was clearly and coarsely traced between the two regions: on the one side a luxuriant vegetation, glowing with vigour and health; verdant plains covered with a close, tall grass, in which animals of every description browsed: the song of birds, the hiss of reptiles, the lowing of the buffaloes, in a word, grand, vigorous, and ever-joyous life, exhaling in every pore of this blessed landscape.
On the other side, the silence of death: a grey horizon; a sea of sand, whose agitated waves pressed forward on every side, as if to encroach on the prairie; not even the most scanty pasture—nothing—no roots, no moss, naught but sand!
After his conversation with Cucharés the count recalled his lieutenants, and began drinking and laughing again in their society. They rose from the table at an advanced hour to retire to sleep. Cucharés, however, did not sleep: he was too busily engaged in thinking. We know now, or nearly so, with what purpose he joined the count at the Casa Grande.
At sunrise the bugles sounded the réveillé. The soldiers rose from the ground on which they had been sleeping, shook off the night's cold, and were busily engaged in dressing their horses and preparations for the morning's meal. The camp soon put on that hurry and reckless animation so characteristic of Frenchmen when out on an expedition.
In the great hall of the Casa Grande the count and his lieutenants, seated on the dried skulls of buffaloes, were holding a council. The discussion was animated.
"In an hour," the count said, "we shall set out. We have twenty mules laden with provisions, ten to carry water, and eight for ammunition. We have, therefore, nothing to fear."