arth, beholds not the brightness of
the heavens.

A prairie, when green, does not always glad the eye,--not even when
enamelled with fairest flowers. I have crossed such plains, verdant or
blooming to the utmost verge of vision, and longed for _something_ to
appear _in sight_--a rock, tree, a living creature--anything to relieve
the universal sameness; just as the voyager on the ample ocean longs for
ships, for _cetaceae_, or the sight of land, and is delighted with a
nautilus, polypi, phosphorescence, or a floating weed.

Colour alone does not satisfy the sense. What hue more charming than
the fresh verdure of the grassy plain? what more exquisite than the deep
blue of the ocean? and yet the eye grows aweary of both! Even the
"flower-prairie," with its thousands of gay corollas of every tint and
shade--with its golden helianthus, its white argemone, its purple
cleome, its pink malvaceae, its blue lupin--its poppy worts of red and
orange--even these fair tints grow tiresome to the sight, and the eye
yearns for form and motion.

If so, what must be the prairie when divested of all these verdant and
flowery charms--when burned to black ashes? It is difficult to conceive
the aspect of dreary monotony it then presents--more difficult to
describe it. Words will not paint such a scene.

And such presented itself to our eyes as we rode out from the chapparal.
The fire was past--even the smoke had ceased to ascend--except in spots
where the damp earth still reeked under the heat--but right and left,
and far ahead, on to the very hem of the horizon, the surface was of one
uniform hue, as if covered with a vast crape. There was nought of form
to be seen, living or lifeless; there was neither life nor motion, even
in the elements; all sounds had ceased: an awful stillness reigned above
and around--the world seemed dead and shrouded in a vast sable pall!

Under other circumstances, I might have stayed to regard such a scene,
though not to admire it. On that interminable waste, there was nought
to be admired, not even sublimity; but no spectacle, however sublime,
however beautiful, could have won from me a thought at that moment.

The trackers had already ridden far out, and were advancing, half
concealed by the cloud of black "stoor" flung up from the heels of their
horses.

For some distance, they moved straight on, without looking for the
tracks of the steed. Before meeting the fire, they had traced them
beyond th