Upon our approach, they came out with the intention of holding a conversation with us, but, owing to an equal ignorance of the language of each other, we could obtain from them but little information. After wasting a short time in attempting to glean intelligence of our future route, we gave it up, and started forward at random. We rode up hills and down hollows; spattered through streams; galloped over patches of prairie, and through clumps of woodland; until, after riding for more than an hour, we found ourselves in the edge of a wood, and in the very heart of a town of the Delawares.
A general barking of dogs again announced us to the Indians. They flocked out to meet us. From them we learned our route, and, passing through the village, continued our journey towards the cantonment.
There is but little in the civilised Indian to excite interest, or to enlist the feelings; they are a race between the whites, and their own people, as God made them. We have heard tales of those from whom they sprang; of their contests for their soil; of their fierce and bloody defence of their villages, and of the graves of their ancestors. But where are they? Where are the braves of the nation? They have come within the blighting influence of the white man; they have been swept away even as is the grass of their own prairie before the fire of the hunter. A spring may come again to revive the drooping face of nature; but to them there is no spring—no renovation. It is probable that, ere two centuries shall elapse, there will be but a very remnant of their race—a few wretched beings lingering about the then abodes of civilisation, unheeded, unnoticed—strangers in the land of their fathers.
We paused for a short time in the edge of the forest to take a lingering look of the village; then turning away, we pursued our course until our horses again brought us to the prairie, upon which was imprinted the wide trail leading to Leavenworth.
CHAP. IV.
THE PRAIRIE.—ARRIVAL AT FORT LEAVENWORTH.
The passing cloud which had swept over the prairie in the morning, had left nothing but beauty. A cool freshness exhaled from the tall grass glittering with its water beads. The rich, though parched foliage seemed to have given place to a young and luxuriant growth of the richest green. The clusters of flowers which had worn a dried and feverish look, now rose in renovated beauty, as if from their bed of sickness, and spread their perfumes through the morning air.
In the spring of the year, these prairies are covered with a profusion of pale pink flowers, rearing their delicate stalks among the rough blades of the wild grass. These were too fragile to withstand the scorching heat of summer; they had disappeared, and their stalks had also withered. Others had succeeded them. There was a gorgeous richness in the summer apparel of the prairie. Flowers of red, yellow, purple, and crimson were scattered in profusion among the grass, sometimes growing singly, and at others spreading out in beds of several acres in extent. Like many beauties in real life, they make up in the glare of their colours, what they want in delicacy; they dazzle but at a distance, and will not bear closer scrutiny.
There is a sensation of wild pleasure, in traversing these vast and boundless wastes. At one moment we were standing upon the crest of some wave-like hill, which commanded a wide view of the green desert before us. Here and there, were small clumps of trees, resting, like islands, upon the bosom of this sea of grass. Far off, a long waving line of timber winding like a serpent over the country, marked the course of some hidden stream. But a hundred steps of our horses carried us from the point of look-out. Passing down the sides of the hill, we splashed through the water at the bottom; tore a path through the grass, which frequently rose, in these hollows, to the height of eight or ten feet, and the next moment stood upon the crest of a hill similar to the first. This was again cut off as we descended a second time into the trough which followed the long surge-like swell of land.
Such is the prairie—hill follows hill, and hollow succeeds hollow, with the same regularity as the sweeping billows of the ocean. Occasionally a high broken bluff rears its solitary head in the midst, like some lonely sentinel overlooking the country. Upon the tops of these we frequently saw an Indian, standing in bold relief against the sky, or seated upon some pleasant spot on its summit, and basking in the sunshine, with that air of lazy enjoyment which characterises the race.