Two months have elapsed since we left the Trail-Hunter commencing his adventurous journey, and we are in the heart of the desert. Before us immensity is unfolded. What pen, however eloquent, would venture to describe those illimitable oceans of verdure to which the North Americans have in their imagery, given the poetic and mysterious name of the Far West? That is to say, the truly unknown region, with its scenes at once grand and striking, soft and terrible; unbounded prairies in which may be found that rich and luxuriant Flora, against whose magic growth only the Indian can successfully struggle.
These plains, at the first glance, offer the dazzled eye of the rash traveller who ventures on them a vast carpet of verdure embossed with flowers, furrowed by large streams; and they appear of a desperate regularity, mingling in the horizon with the azure of the sky.
It is only by degrees, when the sight grows accustomed to the picture, that, gradually mastering the details, the visitor notices here and there rather lofty hills, the escarped sides of the water courses, and a thousand unexpected accidents which agreeably break that monotony by which the eye is at first saddened, and which the lofty grass and the giant productions of the Flora completely conceal.
How can we enumerate the products of this primitive nature, which form an inextricable confusion and interlacement, describing majestic curves, producing grand arcades, and offering, in a word, the most splendid and sublime spectacle it was ever given to man to admire through its eternal contrasts and striking harmony?
Above the gigantic ferns, the mezquite, the cactuses, nopales, larches, and fruit-laden arbutuses, rise the mahogany tree with its oblong leaves, the moriche, or pine tree, the abanijo, whose wide leaves are shaped like a fan, the pirijao, from which hang enormous clusters of golden fruit, the royal palm whose stem is denuded of foliage, and balances its majestic and tufted head at the slightest breath; the Indian cane, the lemon tree, the guava, the plantain, the chinciroya, or intoxicating fruit, the oak, the pine tree, and the wax palm, distilling its resinous gum.
Then, there are immense fields of dahlias, flowers whiter than the snows of the Caffre de Perote or the Chimborazo, or redder than blood, immense lianas twining and circling round the stems of trees and vines overflowing with sap; and in the midst of this inextricable chaos fly, run, and crawl, in every direction, animals of all sorts and sizes, birds, quadrupeds, reptiles, amphibious, singing, crying, howling and roaring with every note of the human gamut, some mocking and menacing, others soft and melancholy.
The stags and deer bounding timidly along, with ear erect and eye on the watch, the bighorn leaping from rock to rock, and then resting motionless on the verge of a precipice, the heavy and stupid buffaloes with their sad eyes; the wild horses, whose numerous manadas make the earth re-echo in their purposeless chase; the alligator, with its body in the mud, and sleeping in the sun; the hideous iguana carelessly climbing up a tree; the puma, that maneless lion; the panther and jaguar cunningly watch their prey as it passes; the brown bear, that gluttonous honey-hunter; the grizzly, the most formidable denizen of these countries; the cotejo, with its venomous bite; the chameleon, whose skin reflects every hue; the green lizard, and the basilisk crawling silent and sinister beneath the leaves; the monstrous boa, the coral snake, so small and yet so terrible; the cascabel, the macaurel, and the great striped serpent.
The feathered flock sing and twitter on the branches, hidden beneath the dense foliage; the tanagers, the curassos, the chattering lloros, the haras, the flycatcher, the toucans, with their enormous beaks, the pigeons, the trogons, the elegant rose flamingos, the swans balancing and sporting in the streams, and the light and graceful gray squirrels leaping with unimaginable speed from creeper to creeper, from shrub to shrub.
