cubical crystals. The wheat was all garnered, and the land
ploughed for a new crop. There was Indian corn standing, but I saw no
pumpkins warming their yellow carapaces in the sunshine like so many
turtles; only in a single instance did I notice some wretched little
miniature specimens in form and hue not unlike those colossal oranges of
our cornfields. The rail fences were somewhat disturbed, and the cinders
of extinguished fires showed the use to which they had been applied. The
houses along the road were not for the most part neatly kept; the garden
fences were poorly built of laths or long slats, and very rarely of
trim aspect. The men of this region seemed to ride in the saddle very
generally, rather than drive. They looked sober and stern, less curious
and lively than Yankees, and I fancied that a type of features familiar
to us in the countenance of the late John Tyler, our accidental
President, was frequently met with. The women were still more
distinguishable from our New England pattern. Soft, sallow, succulent,
delicately finished about the mouth and firmly shaped about the chin,
dark-eyed, full-throated, they looked as if they had been grown in
a land of olives. There was a little toss in their movement, full of
muliebrity. I fancied there was something more of the duck and less of
the chicken about them, as compared with the daughters of our leaner
soil; but these are mere impressions caught from stray glances, and
if there is any offence in them, my fair readers may consider them all
retracted.

At intervals, a dead horse lay by the roadside, or in the fields,
unburied, not grateful to gods or men. I saw no bird of prey, no
ill-omened fowl, on my way to the carnival of death, or at the place
where it had been held. The vulture of story, the crow of Talavera, the
"twa corbies" of the ghastly ballad, are all from Nature, doubtless;
but no black wing was spread over these animal ruins, and no call to the
banquet pierced through the heavy-laden and sickening air.

Full in the middle of the road, caring little for whom or what they met,
came long strings of army wagons, returning empty from the front after
supplies. James Grayden stated it as his conviction that they had a
little rather run into a fellow than not. I liked the looks of these
equipages and their drivers; they meant business. Drawn by mules mostly,
six, I think, to a wagon, powdered well with dust, wagon, beast, and
driver, they came jogging alon