The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper & Blake Nevius

Author:James Fenimore Cooper & Blake Nevius [Cooper, Jantes Fenimore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101656150
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2005-12-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIX.

“How if he will not stand?”

Much Ado about Nothing, III.iii. 28.

THE several movements, related in the close of the preceding chapter had passed in so short a space of time, that the old man, while he neglected not to note the smallest incident, had no opportunity of expressing his opinion concerning the stranger’s motives. After the Pawnee had disappeared, however, he shook his head, and muttered while he walked slowly to the angle of the thicket that the Pawnee had just quitted.

“There are both scents and sounds in the air, though my miserable senses are not good enough to hear the one or to catch the taint of the other.”

“There is nothing to be seen,” cried Middleton who kept close at his side. “My eyes and my ears are good, and yet I can assure you that I neither hear nor see any thing.”

“Your eyes are good! and you are not deaf!” returned the other with a slight air of contempt, “no, lad, no—they may be good to see across a church or to hear a town bell, but afore you had passed a year on these Prairies you would find yourself mistaking a turkey for a horse, or conceiting fifty times that the roar of a buffaloe bull was the thunder of the Lord. There is a deception of natur’ in these naked plains, in which the air throws up the image like water, and then is it hard to tell the Prairies from a sea. But yonder is a sign that a hunter never fails to know!”

The trapper pointed to a flight of vultures that were sailing over the plain at no great distance, and apparently in the direction in which the Pawnee had rivetted his eye. At first Middleton could not distinguish the small dark objects that were dotting the dusky clouds, but as they came swiftly onward, first their forms and then their heavy waving wings became distinctly visible.

“Listen;” said the trapper, when he had succeeded in making Middleton see the moving column of birds; “now you hear the buffaloes, or bisons as your knowing Doctor sees fit to call them, though buffaloes is their name among all the hunters of these regions. Now, I conclude that a hunter is a better judge of a beast and of its name,” he added winking to the young soldier, “than any man who has turn’d over the leaves of a book, instead of travelling over the face of the ‘arth, in order to find out the natur’s of its inhabitants.”

“Of their habits, I will grant you,” cried the Naturalist, who rarely miss’d an opportunity to agitate any point which touched his favorite studies, “that is provided, always, that deference is had to the proper use of definitions, and that they are contemplated with scientific eyes.”

“Eyes of a mole! as if man’s eyes were not as good for names as the eyes of any other creatur’! who named the works of His hand, can you tell me that,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.