an the
effect of the sun's rays, which, in forcing their way through the silvered
leaves and mosses, took as many varieties of colour as if they had passed
through a window of painted glass, and gave the rich, subdued, and solemn
light of some old cathedral.

The trunk of the tree rose, free from all branches, full forty feet from
the ground, rough and knotted, and of such enormous size that it might
have been taken for a mass of rock, covered with moss and lichens, while
many of its boughs were nearly as thick as the trunk of any tree I had
ever previously seen.

I was so absorbed in the contemplation of the vegetable giant, that for a
short space I almost forgot my troubles; but as I rode away from the tree
they returned to me in full force, and my reflections were certainly of no
very cheering or consolatory nature. I rode on, however, most
perseveringly. The morning slipped away; it was noon, the sun stood high
in the cloudless heavens. My hunger had now increased to an insupportable
degree, and I felt as if something were gnawing within me, something like
a crab tugging and riving at my stomach with his sharp claws. This feeling
left me after a time, and was replaced by a sort of squeamishness, a faint
sickly sensation. But if hunger was bad, thirst was worse. For some hours
I suffered martyrdom. At length, like the hunger, it died away, and was
succeeded by a feeling of sickness. The thirty hours' fatigue and fasting
I had endured were beginning to tell upon my naturally strong nerves: I
felt my reasoning powers growing weaker, and my presence of mind leaving
me. A feeling of despondency came over me--a thousand wild fancies passed
through my bewildered brain; while at times my head grew dizzy, and I
reeled in my saddle like a drunken man. These weak fits, as I may call
them, did not last long; and each time that I recovered I spurred my
mustang onwards, but it was all in vain--ride as far and as fast as I
would, nothing was visible but a boundless sea of grass.

At length I gave up all hope, except in that God whose almighty hand was
so manifest in the beauteous works around me. I let the bridle fall on my
horse's neck, clasped my hands together, and prayed as I had never before
prayed, so heartily and earnestly. When I had finished my prayer I felt
greatly comforted. It seemed to me, that here in the wilderness, which man
had not as yet polluted, I was nearer to God, and that my petition would
assuredly be hea