The
foot of the white hunter, or even of the roving Indian, had perhaps
never visited it, nor foraging-parties of the buffalo or deer, for we
saw no signs of them; but birds of varied plumage and song, and troops
of squirrels, with footprints here and there of the grizzly bear, and a
drove of wild turkeys, with red heads aloft, rushing over an eminence
at our left as we approached, and an occasional whir of a rattlesnake
at our feet, sufficiently indicated the kind of denizens by which the
plateau was inhabited.
Here, on the rich sward and delicate mosses, under the shadow of some
willows, we spread out our repast by the side of a clear
mountain-spring; and, to say nothing of old Otard and Schiedam
Schnapps, opened some bottles of Sparkling Catawba, and old Jersey
Champagne, of a remote vintage, which I have now quite forgotten. With
the flow of these beverages flowed our speech, in jovial words and
songs and raillery enough, if not in wit. De Aery, as having by a
hair's breadth just escaped with his life, and in virtue of his
extraordinary feat in leaping five hundred feet or more through a bank
of snow, now that the danger was over, was made the butt of much
pleasantry, which he bore with his usual equanimity and grace.
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