forwards. Fearful of losing the right trace, I was looking carefully about
me to see in what direction they had recommenced their journey, when I
noticed something white amongst the long grass. I got off my horse to pick
it up. It was a piece of paper with my own name written upon it; and I
recognized it as the back of a letter in which my tobacco had been wrapped,
and which I had thrown away at my halting-place of the preceding night. I
looked around, and recognized the island and the very tree under which I
had slept or endeavoured to sleep. The horrible truth instantly flashed
across me--the horse tracks I had been following were my own: since the
preceding morning I had been riding in _a circle_!

I stood for a few seconds thunderstruck by this discovery, and then sank
upon the ground in utter despair. At that moment I should have been
thankful to any one who would have knocked me on the head as I lay. All I
wished for was to die as speedily as possible.

I remained I know not how long lying in a desponding, half insensible,
state upon the grass. Several hours must have elapsed; for when I got up,
the sun was low in the western heavens. My head was so weak and wandering,
that I could not well explain to myself how it was that I had been thus
riding after my own shadow. Yet the thing was clear enough. Without
landmarks, and in the monotonous scenery of the prairie, I might have gone
on for ever following my horses track, and going back when I thought I was
going forwards, had it not been for the discovery of the tobacco paper. I
was, as I subsequently learned, in the Jacinto prairie, one of the most
beautiful in Texas, full sixty miles long and broad, but in which the most
experienced hunters never risked themselves without a compass. It was
little wonder then that I, a mere boy of two and twenty, just escaped from
college, should have gone astray in it.