Such was the rich landscape we had been surrounded by a short hour
before. But now, on looking around, we found the scene changed; and our
horizon became far more limited by rising clouds of bluish grey vapour,
which approached us rapidly from the wind quarter. Each moment this fog
appeared to become thicker; the sun no longer dazzled our eyes when we
gazed on it, but showed through the mist like a pale red moon; the
outlines of the forest disappeared, veiled from our sight by masses of
vapour; and the air, which, during the morning, had been light and
elastic, although hot, became each moment heavier and more difficult to
inhale. The part of the prairie that remained visible, presented the
appearance of a narrow, misty valley, enclosed between two mighty ranges
of grey mountains, which the fog represented. As we gazed around us and
beheld these strange phenomena, our eyes met, and we read in each others
countenance that embarrassment which the bravest and most light-hearted
are apt to feel, when hemmed in by perils of which they cannot
conjecture the nature.

"Fire off your gun," said I to Carleton. I started as I spoke at the
alteration in my own voice. The gun went off, but the report was, as it
were, stifled by the compressed atmosphere. It did not even alarm some
water-fowl that were plashing and floundering in the creek a few hundred
paces from us.

"Look at our horses!" exclaimed Carleton. "They are surely going mad."
The animals were evidently uneasy at something. They pricked up their
ears, turned half round, and gazed with startled eye behind them; then
strained with their heads and necks in the opposite direction to the
vapour, snorting violently, and at last trying to break away from the
trees to which they were tied. A short time previously they had appeared