mind the exquisite text of Job: "Canst thou bind the secret influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?" I do not know why it was, but I felt this night unusually affected by the solemn magnificence of the firmament; and seemed, as I lay thus under the open vault of heaven, to inhale with the pure untainted air, an exhilarating buoyancy of spirit, and, as it were, an ecstasy of mind. I slept and waked alternately; and when I slept, my dreams partook of the happy tone of my waking reveries. Toward morning, one of the sentinels, the oldest man in the troop, came and took a seat near me; he was weary and sleepy, and impatient to be relieved. I found he had been gazing at the heavens also, but with different feelings.
"If the stars don’t deceive me," said he, "it is near daybreak."
"There can be no doubt of that," said Beatte, who lay close by. "I heard an owl just now."
"Does the owl, then, hoot toward daybreak?" asked I.
"Aye, sir, just as the cock crows."
This was a useful habitude of the bird of wisdom, of which I was not aware. Neither the stars nor owl deceived their votaries. In a short time there was a faint streak of light in the east.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Old Creek Encampment.—Scarcity of Provisions.—Bad Weather.—Weary Marching.—A Hunter's Bridge.
The country through which we passed this morning (November 2d), was less rugged, and of more agreeable aspect than that we had lately traversed. At eleven o'clock, we came out upon an extensive prairie, and about six miles to our left beheld a long line of green forest, marking the course of the north fork of the Arkansas. On the edge of the prairie, and in a spacious grove of noble trees which overshadowed a small brook, were the traces of an old Creek hunting camp. On the bark of the trees were rude delineations of hunters and squaws, scrawled with charcoal; together with various signs and hieroglyphics, which our half-breeds interpreted as indicating that from this encampment the hunters had returned home.
