_Red Thunder_ was on his feet!—his long arm was stretched over the grass, and his blazing eye-balls starting from their sockets! “White man (said he), see ye that small cloud lifting itself from the prairie? he rises! the hoofs of our horses have waked him! The _Fire Spirit_ is awake—this wind is from his nostrils, and his face is this way!” No more—but his swift horse darted under him, and he gracefully slid over the waving grass as it was bent by the wind. Our viands were left, and we were swift on his trail. The extraordinary leaps of his wild horse, occasionally raised his red shoulders to view, and he sank again in the waving billows of grass. The tremulous wind was hurrying by us fast, and on it was borne the agitated wing of the soaring eagle. His neck was stretched for the towering bluff, and the thrilling screams of his voice told the secret that was behind him. Our horses were swift, and we struggled hard, yet hope was feeble, for the bluff was yet _blue_, and nature nearly exhausted! The sunshine was _dying_, and a cool shadow advancing over the plain. Not daring to look back, we strained every nerve. The roar of a distant cataract seemed gradually advancing on us—the winds increased, the howling tempest was maddening behind us—and the swift-winged _beetle_ and _heath hens_, instinctively drew their straight lines over our heads. The fleet-bounding antelope passed us also; and the _still swifter_ long-legged hare, who leaves but a shadow as he flies! Here was no time for thought—but I recollect the heavens were overcast—the distant thunder was heard—the lightning’s glare was reddening the scene—and the smell that came on the winds struck terror to my soul! * * * * The piercing yell of my savage guide at this moment came back upon the winds—his robe was seen waving in the air, and his foaming horse leaping up the towering bluff. Our breath and our sinews, in this last struggle for life, were just enough to bring us to its summit. We had risen from a _sea of fire_! “Great God! (I exclaimed) how sublime to gaze into that valley, where the elements of nature are so strangely convulsed!” Ask not the poet or painter how it looked, for they can tell you not; but ask the _naked savage_, and watch the electric twinge of his manly nerves and muscles, as he pronounces the lengthened “hush——sh————” his hand on his mouth, and his glaring eye-balls looking you to the very soul! I beheld beneath me an immense cloud of black smoke, which extended from one extremity of this vast plain to the other, and seemed majestically to roll over its surface in a bed of liquid fire; and above this mighty desolation, as it rolled along, the whitened smoke, pale with terror, was streaming and rising up in magnificent cliffs to heaven!