must erelong fall in with some party of Americans--or Cochon Yankees, as
he called them--who, in spite of the hatred borne them by the Acadians
and Creoles, were daily becoming more numerous in the country.

After waiting, in anxious expectation of Martin's return, for a full
hour, during which the air seemed to get more and more sultry, my
companion began to wax impatient. "What can the fellow be about?" cried
he. "Give a blast on the horn," he added, handing me the instrument; "I
cannot sound it myself, for my tongue cleaves to my palate from heat and
drought."

I put the horn to my mouth, and gave a blast. But the tones emitted were
not the clear echo-awakening sounds that cheer and strengthen the
hunter. They were dull and short, as though the air had lost all
elasticity and vibration, and by its weight crushed back the sounds into
the horn. It was a warning of some inscrutable danger. We gazed around
us, and saw that others were not wanting.

The spot where we had halted was on the edge of one of those pine
forests that extend, almost without interruption, from the hills of the
Côte Gelée to the Opelousa mountains, and of a vast prairie, sprinkled
here and there with palmetto fields, clumps of trees, and broad patches
of brushwood, which appeared mere dark specks on the immense extent of
plain that lay before us, covered with grass of the brightest green, and
so long, as to reach up to our horses' shoulders. To the right was a
plantation of palmettos, half a mile wide, and bounded by a sort of
creek or gully, the banks of which were covered with gigantic
cypress-trees. Beyond this, more prairie and a wood of evergreen oak. To
the east, an impenetrable thicket of magnolias, papaws, oak and bean
trees--to the north, the pine wood before mentioned.