Chapter Eighteen.
Geography and Geology.
We rested above an hour in the cool shade, while our horses refreshed themselves on the “grama” that grew luxuriantly around. We conversed about the singular region in which we were travelling; singular in its geography, its geology, its botany, and its history; singular in all respects.
I am a traveller, as I might say, by profession. I felt an interest in learning something of the wild countries that stretched for hundreds of miles around us; and I knew there was no man living so capable of being my informant as he with whom I then conversed.
My journey down the river had made me but little acquainted with its features. At that time, as I have already related, there was fever upon me; and my memory of objects was as though I had encountered them in some distorted dream.
My brain was now clear; and the scenes through which we were passing—here soft and south-like, there wild, barren, and picturesque—forcibly impressed my imagination.
The knowledge, too, that parts of this region had once been inhabited by the followers of Cortez, as many a ruin testified; that it had been surrendered back to its ancient and savage lords, and the inference that this surrender had been brought about by the enactment of many a tragic scene, induced a train of romantic thought, which yearned for gratification in an acquaintance with the realities that gave rise to it.
Seguin was communicative. His spirits were high. His hopes were buoyant. The prospect of again embracing his long-lost child imbued him, as it were, with new life. He had not, he said, felt so happy for many years.
“It is true,” said he, in answer to a question I had put, “there is little known of this whole region, beyond the boundaries of the Mexican settlements. They who once had the opportunity of recording its geographical features have left the task undone. They were too busy in the search for gold; and their weak descendants, as you see, are too busy in robbing one another to care for aught else. They know nothing of the country beyond their own borders; and these are every day contracting upon them. All they know of it is the fact that thence come their enemies, whom they dread, as children do ghosts or wolves.”