transparent pools and isle-dotted lakes, reflecting cool
groves and grassy resting places, only to be borne off
by the wind, and cruelly snatched from their grasp on
nearer approach ; so to the ardent longings of their
inflamed brains, fickle fortune, incarnated, becomes a
true prophetess, and beckons them on with pleasing
illusions to their destruction. Alas ! that it should
be so ; that fortune, fame, and happiness, and life itsclf,
should be so like the mirage to which these foot-sore
desert-walkers so often anchored their hopes I
At the beginning of the journey, with fresh cattle, a plentiful store of food, and a road that lay through grassy prairies and well-watered valleys, with bright, cheerful warmth by day and restoring sleep at night, each dropping into place, and all attending to their several duties, driving their teams, seeking water, preparing resting-places for the night, unyoking oxen, picketing horses, unpacking the wagons, pitching tents, gathering wood and cooking the supper, mending broken wagons, telling stories by the camp-fires, watching their grazing cattle, or scouring the adjacent plain for the strayed or such as had been stolen, chasing buflalo, shooting antelope, parleying with the natives — in the first flush of sanguine hope, with ex- pectation bright before them, this sort of life was not so bad. When a caravan camped at night, the men made a circle of their wagons, at once a bulwark and a corral for their cattle. About this they pitched their tents, and surrounded all with a guard of blazing camp-fires, which threw their glare far into the sur- rounding darkness, and illuminated the groups that cooked or smoked or slept beside them. Golden- winged Eros sometimes dropped in among them, flut- tered about the wagons, and a clergyman or squire must be hunted up among the trains to terminate his sad doings by a marriage. Once in a while they killed a buflalo, and then they munched and munched, till marrow, and fat, and fullness made their worn, wan faces to shine in the red fire-light like the satyrs.
