Wild Western Scenes: A Narrative of Adventures in the Western Wilderness, Wherein the Exploits of Daniel Boone, the Great American Pioneer are Particularly DescribedJones, J. B. (John Beauchamp)
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Wild Western Scenes: A Narrative of Adventures in the Western Wilderness, Wherein the Exploits of Daniel Boone, the Great American Pioneer are Particularly Described
Jones, J. B. (John Beauchamp)
Boone, Daniel, 1734-1820 -- Fiction; Western stories; Wilderness areas -- Fiction
Animated with their excellent success, they anticipated much more
sport, inasmuch as neither themselves nor the hounds (which hitherto
were not required to do farther service than to watch one of the deer
while the men were engaged with the other) were in the slightest degree
fatigued. The hours flew past unnoticed, while the young men proceeded
gayly outward from the river in quest of new adventures.
Glenn and his man rode far beyond the scene of their late success
without discovering any new object to gratify their undiminished zest
for the chase. It seemed that the deer which had escaped had actually
given intelligence to the rest of the arrival of a deadly foe in the
vicinity, for not one could now be seen in riding several miles. The
sun was sinking low and dim in the west, and Glenn was on the eve of
turning homeward, when, on emerging from the flat prairie to a slight
eminence that he had marked as boundary of his excursion, he beheld at
no great distance an enormous mound, of pyramidical shape, which, from
its isolated condition, he could not believe to be the formation of
nature. Curious to inspect what he supposed to be a stupendous specimen
of the remains of former generations of the aborigines, he resolved to
protract his ride and ascend to the summit. The mound was some five
hundred feet in diameter at the base, and terminated at a peak about
one hundred and fifty feet in height. As our riders ascended, with some
difficulty keeping in the saddle, they observed the earth on the sides
to be mixed with flint-stones, and many of them apparently having once
been cut in the shape of arrow-heads; and in several places where
chasms had been formed by heavy showers, they remarked a great many
pieces of bones, but so much broken and decayed they could not be
certain that they were particles of human skeletons. When they reached
the summit, which was not more than twenty feet in width and entirely
barren, a magnificent scene burst in view. For ten or fifteen miles
round on every side, the eye could discern oval, oblong, and circular
groves of various dimensions, scattered over the rich virgin soil. The
gentle undulations of the prairie resembled the boundless ocean
entranced, as if the long swells had been suddenly abandoned by the
wind, and yet remained stationary in their rolling attitude.
“What think you of the view, Joe?” inquired Glenn, after regarding the
scene many minutes in silence.
“I’ve been watching a little speck, way out toward the, sun, which
keeps bobbing up and down, and gets bigger and bigger,” said Joe.
“I mean the prospect around,” said Glenn. I can’t form an opinion,
because I can’t see the end of it,” replied Joe, still intently
regarding the object referred to.
“That is an animal of some kind,” observed Glenn, marking the object
that attracted Joe.
“And a wapper, too; when I first saw it I thought it was a rabbit, and
now it’s bigger than a deer, and still a mile or two off,” said Joe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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