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The War Trail, The Hunt of the Wild Horse, by Captain Mayne Reid.
Numerous extremely difficult situations are encountered, and it is often the woodcraft and ingenuity of these men that gets them out of them, sometimes in extremely unexpected ways. This results in a series of tense incidents, and, though the literary style is a bit unusual, they are very gripping.
Many books by this author were published in the second half of the nineteenth century, and some of them were printed with rather damaged type. The copy of this book that we worked from was one of these, so there may well be a very few typos left, for which we apologise.
SOUVENIRS.
Land of Moctezuma! I have other souvenirs of thee, more deeply graven on my memory than these pictures of peace. Thou recallest scenes of war. I traversed thy fields a foeman--sword in hand--and now, after years gone by, many a wild scene of soldier-life springs up before me with all the vividness of reality.
The wild tale is told--the song is sung--the jest goes round--the hoarse peal echoes through the aisles of the forest, frighting the parrot on its perch, and the wolf upon his prowl. Little reck they who sing, and jest, and laugh--little reck they of the morrow.
The bugle sounds the charge; its notes are drowned by the charging cheer. We meet our swarthy foemen face to face; spear-thrusts are answered by pistol-shots; our sabres cross and clink, but our snorting steeds rear back, and will not let us kill each other. We wheel and meet again, with deadlier aim, and more determined arm; we strike without remorse--we strike for freedom!
Lovely land! In truth have I sweet memories of thee; for who could traverse thy fields without beholding some fair flower, ever after to be borne upon his bosom! And yet, not all my souvenirs are glad. Pleasant and painful, sweet and sad, they thrill my heart with alternate throes. But the sad emotions have been tempered by time, and the glad ones, at each returning tide, seem tinged with brighter glow. In thy bowers, as elsewhere, roses must be plucked from thorns; but in memory's mellowed light I see not the thorns--I behold only the bright and beautiful roses.
Favoured land! Ceres loves thee, and Bacchus too. To thy fields both the god and the goddess have been freely bounteous. Food and drink may be had from them on easy terms. Alas! as in all other lands--one only excepted--Nature's divine views have been thwarted, her aim set aside, by the malignity of man. As over the broad world the blight of the despot is upon thy beauty.
The ring of a bugle startles me from this pleasant reverie. 'Tis only a stable-call; but it has driven sweet reflections out of my mind, and my eyes are turned away from the bright mansion, and rest upon the piazza of the pueblita. There, a far different scene greets their glance.
THE RANGERS ON PICKET.
The centre of the piazza presents a salient point in the picture. There the well , with its gigantic wheel, its huge leathern belt and buckets, its trough of cemented stone-work, offers an Oriental aspect. Verily, it is the Persian wheel! 'Tis odd to a northern eye to find such a structure in this Western land; but the explanation is easy. The Persian wheel has travelled from Egypt along the southern shores of the Mediterranean. With the Moors it crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and the Spaniard has carried it over the Atlantic. The reader of the sacred volume will find many a familiar passage illustrated in the customs of Mexico. The genius of the Arab has shaped many a thought for the brain of the Aztec!
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