The mummy-wheat.
THE PRAIRIE AND THE SWAMP.
AN ADVENTURE IN LOUISIANA.
It was a sultry September afternoon in the year 18—. My friend Carleton and myself had been three days wandering about the prairies, and had nearly filled our tin boxes and other receptacles with specimens of rare and curious plants. But we had not escaped paying the penalty of our zeal as naturalists, in the shape of a perfect roasting from the sun, which had shot down its rays during the whole time of our ramble, with an ardour only to be appreciated by those who have visited the Louisianian prairies. What made matters worse our little store of wine had been early expended; some Taffia, with which we had replenished our flasks, had also disappeared; and the water we met with, besides being rare, contained so much vegetable and animal mater, as to be undrinkable unless qualified in some manner. In this dilemma, we came to a halt under a clump of hickory trees, and dispatched Martin, Carleton's Acadian servant, upon a voyage of discovery. He had assured us that we must erelong fall in with some party of Americans—or Cochon Yankees, as he called them—who, in spite of the hatred borne them by the Acadians and Creoles, were daily becoming more numerous in the country.
After waiting, in anxious expectation of Martin's return, for a full hour, during which the air seemed to get more and more sultry, my companion began to wax impatient. "What can the fellow be about?" cried he. "Give a blast on the horn," he added, handing me the instrument; "I cannot sound it myself, for my tongue cleaves to my palate from heat and drought."
I put the horn to my mouth, and gave a blast. But the tones emitted were not the clear echo-awakening sounds that cheer and strengthen the hunter. They were dull and short, as though the air had lost all elasticity and vibration, and by its weight crushed back the sounds into the horn. It was a warning of some inscrutable danger. We gazed around us, and saw that others were not wanting.
The spot where we had halted was on the edge of one of those pine forests that extend, almost without interruption, from the hills of the Côte Gelée to the Opelousa mountains, and of a vast prairie, sprinkled here and there with palmetto fields, clumps of trees, and broad patches of brushwood, which appeared mere dark specks on the immense extent of plain that lay before us, covered with grass of the brightest green, and so long, as to reach up to our horses' shoulders. To the right was a plantation of palmettos, half a mile wide, and bounded by a sort of creek or gully, the banks of which were covered with gigantic cypress-trees. Beyond this, more prairie and a wood of evergreen oak. To the east, an impenetrable thicket of magnolias, papaws, oak and bean trees—to the north, the pine wood before mentioned.
Such was the rich landscape we had been surrounded by a short hour before. But now, on looking around, we found the scene changed; and our horizon became far more limited by rising clouds of bluish grey vapour, which approached us rapidly from the wind quarter. Each moment this fog appeared to become thicker; the sun no longer dazzled our eyes when we gazed on it, but showed through the mist like a pale red moon; the outlines of the forest disappeared, veiled from our sight by masses of vapour; and the air, which, during the morning, had been light and elastic, although hot, became each moment heavier and more difficult to inhale. The part of the prairie that remained visible, presented the appearance of a narrow, misty valley, enclosed between two mighty ranges of grey mountains, which the fog represented. As we gazed around us and beheld these strange phenomena, our eyes met, and we read in each others countenance that embarrassment which the bravest and most light-hearted are apt to feel, when hemmed in by perils of which they cannot conjecture the nature.