Chapter 70 - The Hunt of the Wild Horse by Mayne Reid
A Burnt Prairie
The earth offers no aspect more drear and desolate than that of a burnt prairie. The ocean when its waves are grey—a blighted heath—a flat fenny country under a rapid thaw—all these impress the beholder with a feeling of chill monotony; but the water has motion, the heath, colour, and the half-thawed flat exhibits variety in its mottling of white and ground.
Not so the steppe that has been fired and burned. In this, the eye perceives neither colour, nor form, nor motion. It roams over the limitless level in search of one or other, but in vain; and in the absence of all three, it tires, and the heart grows cheerless and sick. Even the sky scarcely offers relief. It, too, by refraction from the black surface beneath, wears a dull livid aspect; or perhaps the eye, jaundiced by the reflection of the earth, 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 the edge of the chapparal, and therefore knew the direction.
After a while, I observed them moving more slowly, with their eyes upon the ground as if they had lost it, I had doubts of their being able either to find or follow it now. The shallow hoof-prints would be filled with the débris of the burnt herbage—surely they could no longer be traced?
By myself, they could not, nor by a common man; but it seemed that to the eyes of those keen hunters, the trail was as conspicuous as ever. I saw that, after searching a few seconds, they had taken it up, and were once more moving along, guided by the tracks.
Some slight hollows I could perceive, distributed here and there over the ground, and scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding level. Certainly, without having been told what they were, I should not have known them to be the tracks of a horse.
It proved a wide prairie, and we seemed to be crossing its central part. The fire had spread far.
At one place, nearly midway, where the trail was faint, and difficult to make out, we stopped for a short while to give the trackers time. A momentary curiosity induced me to gaze around. Awful was the scene—awful without sublimity. Even the thorny chapparal no longer relieved the eye; the outline of its low shrubbery had sunk below the horizon; and on all sides stretched the charred plain up to the rim of the leaden canopy, black—black—illimitable. Had I been alone, I might easily have yielded to the fancy, that the world was dead.
Gazing over this vast opacity, I for a moment forgot my companions, and fell into a sort of lethargic stupor. I fancied that I too was dead or dreaming—I fancied that I was in hell—the Avernus of the ancients. In my youth, I had the misfortune to be well schooled in classic lore—to the neglect of studies more useful—and often in life have the poetical absurdities of Greek and Latin mythology intruded themselves upon my spirit—both asleep and awake. I fancied, therefore, that some well-meaning Anchises had introduced me to the regions below; and that the black plain before me was some landscape in the kingdom of Pluto. Reflection—had I been capable of that—would have convinced me of my error. No part of that monarch’s dominions can be so thinly peopled.
I was summoned to reason again by the voices of my followers. The lost trail had been found, and they were moving on.