It is a land where no man permanently abides; for, in certain seasons
of the year there is no food either for the hunter or his steed. The
herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and streams are dried
up; the buffalo, the elk and the deer have wandered to distant parts,
keeping within the verge of expiring verdure, and leaving behind them
a vast uninhabited solitude, seamed by ravines, the beds of former
torrents, but now serving only to tantalize and increase the thirst of
the traveller.
Occasionally the monotony of this vast wilderness is interrupted by
mountainous belts of sand and limestone, broken into confused masses;
with precipitous cliffs and yawning ravines, looking like the ruins of
a world; or is traversed by lofty and barren ridges of rock, almost
impassable, like those denominated the Black Hills. Beyond these rise
the stern barriers of the Rocky Mountains, the limits, as it were, of
the Atlantic world. The rugged defiles and deep valleys of this vast
chain form sheltering places for restless and ferocious bands of
savages, many of them the remnants of tribes, once inhabitants of the
prairies, but broken up by war and violence, and who carry into their
mountain haunts the fierce passions and reckless habits of desperadoes.
Such is the nature of this immense wilderness of the far West; which
apparently defies cultivation, and the habitation of civilized life.
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