Agreeably with what Canondah had told him, he found the left bank of the Sabine bare of trees, with the exception of a few stunted firs and cedars growing along the shore. Before him was spread a landscape which the most skilful pencil could but imperfectly sketch, the most powerful fancy with difficulty conceive. It was an interminable tract of meadow land, its long grass waving in the morning breeze, presenting an endless succession of gentle undulations, whilst in the far distance isolated groups of trees appeared to rock like ships upon the boundless ocean. Nowhere was a fixed point to be seen, and the whole stupendous landscape swam before his eyes, waving like the surface of the sea in a soft tropical breeze. Towards the north, the plain rose gradually into highlands, between whose picturesque clusters of trees his eye penetrated to the extremity of the vast panorama, where the bright tints of the landscape blended with those of the horizon. Eastward the huge meadow sank down into bottoms, shaded by trees, and overgrown with reeds and palmettos, shining, as the wind stirred them, like sails in the sunshine. The profound stillness of the sky-bounded plain, only broken by the plash of the waterfowl, or the distant howl of the savanna wolf, and the splendour of the rising sun, imparted an indescribable solemnity and grandeur to the scene. Lower down the river were detached groups of trees, amongst which grazed deer, who, with wondering glances, seemed to ask the wanderer whence he came; and after gazing at him for a while, tossed their antlers proudly in the air, and, as if displeased at the intrusion upon their territory, paced slowly back into the thicket. The whole landscape was dotted with diminutive hillocks of a conical form, the habitations of small brown animals, who sat in front of them with their faces to the sun, making their breakfast on the tender grass.