Wanderings in Three Continents

by Sir Richard Francis Burton

At first the scene was one of a luxuriant vegetation; but after an hour of burning sun and sickly damp, the effects of the late storms, we emerged from the waste of vegetation on to the region of the Grand Prairie. Over the rolling surface, which rarely broke into hill or dale, lay a tapestry of thick grass, already turning to a ruddy yellow under the influence of

approaching autumn. Nothing, I may remark, is more monotonous, except the African and Indian jungle, than these prairie tracks. You saw, as it were, the ends of the earth, and looked around in vain for some object upon which the eye might rest; it wanted the sublimity of repose so suggestive in the sandy deserts, and the perpetual motion so pleasing in the aspect of the sea.

Passing through a few wretched shanties called Troy, in Syracuse, we arrived about three o’clock at Cold Springs, where we were allowed an hour’s halt to dine and change mules. The scene was the “rale” Far West. The widow body to whom the shanty of the station belonged lay sick with fever, and the aspect of her family was a “caution to snakes.” The ill-conditioned sons dawdled about, listless as Indians, in skin tunics, and the daughters, whose sole attire was apparently a calico morning wrapper, waited on us in a grudging way in the wretched log hut, which appeared ignorant of the duster and the broom. Myriads of flies disputed with us a dinner consisting of dough-nuts, suspicious eggs in a greasy fritter, and rusty bacon, intolerably fat. It was our first sight of squatter life, and, except in two cases, it was our worst.

We drove on all the afternoon and all the night, except for a halt for supper. The last part of our journey was performed under a heavy thunderstorm. Gusts of violent wind whizzed overhead, thunder crashed and rattled, and vivid lightning, flashing out of the murky depths around, made earth and air

one blaze of fire. We arrived about one o’clock a.m. at Locknan’s station, a few log huts near a creek. Here we found beds and snatched an hour of sleep. So passed the first day.

It is not my purpose to describe the journey day by day, for it lasted nineteen days, and one day was often much like another. I shall therefore content myself with picking out the chief points of interest on the route.

Before long the prairies wore a burnt-up aspect. As far as the eye could see the tintage was that of the Arabian desert. It was still, however, too early for prairie fires, and I therefore did not witness this magnificent spectacle. In some parts, where the grass is tall and rank, and the roaring flames leap before the fire with the stride of a maddened horse, the danger is imminent, and the spectacle must be one of awful sublimity.

I said at first that the prairie scenery was monotonous, and so on the whole it was, but every now and then we came upon beautiful oases in the desert. Such was the valley of the Little Blue River, fringed with emerald-green oak groves, cotton wood, and long-leaved willow. As we got on to the tableland above this river, between that and the River Platte, the evening approached, and a smile from above lit up into perfect beauty the features of the world below. It was a glorious sunset. Stratum upon stratum of cloud banks, burnished to golden red in the vicinity of the setting sun, and polished to dazzling silvery white

above, lay piled half-way from the horizon to the zenith, with a distinct strike towards a vanishing point to the west and dipping into a gateway, through which the orb of day slowly retired. Overhead floated, in a sea of amber and yellow, pink and green heavy purple clouds, whilst in the east black and blue were so curiously blended that the eye could not distinguish whether it rested upon a darkening air or a lowering thunder-cloud. We enjoyed these beauties, I am glad to say, in silence; not a soul said “Look there!” or “How pretty!”

When we came to the fork of the great River Platte we saw from time to time a line of Indian removes. This meant that these wild people were shifting their quarters for grass, and when it became a little colder they sought some winter abode on the banks of a stream which supplied fuel and where they could find meat, so that with warmth and food, song and talk, and smoke and sleep, they could while away the dull and dreary winter.