gon was not exactly a type for "Long Acre," it was at least strong and
serviceable; and although the wheels were far nearer oval than circular,
they _did_ go round; the noise they created in so doing might have been
disagreeable to a nervous invalid, being something between the scream
of a railway train and the yell of a thousand peacocks. But I believe
we rather liked it,--at least, I know that when some luckless Sybarite
suggested the use of a little bear's fat around the axle, he was looked
on as a kind of barbarian to whom nature denied the least ear for music.

As for the "chasse" itself, it was glorious sport,--glorious in the
unbounded freedom to wander whither one listed; glorious in the sense of
mastery we felt that we alone of all the millions of mankind had reached
this far-away, unvisited tract; glorious in its successes, its dangers,
and its toils?

There was, besides, that endless variety of adventure prairie-hunting
affords. Now, it was the heavy buffalo, lumbering lazily along, and
tossing his huge head in anger as the rifle-ball pierced his dense hide.
Now, it was the proudly an tiered stag, careering free over miles and
miles of waste. At another time the grizzly bear was our prey, and our
sport lay in the dense jungle or among the dwarf scrub, through which
the hissing rattlesnake was darting, affrighted at the noise. In more
peaceful mood, the antelope would be the victim; while the wild turkey
or the great cock of the wood would grace with his bright wavy feathers
the cap of him whose aim was true at longest rifle range.

And these were happy days,--the very happiest of my whole life; for if
sometimes regrets would arise about that road of ambition from which I
had turned off, to wander in the path of mere pleasure, I bethought me
that no career the luckiest fortune could have opened to me would have
developed the same manly powers of endurance of heat and cold and of
peril in a hundred shapes. In no other pursuit could I have educated
myself to the like life of toils and dangers, bringing me daily, as
it were, face to face with Death, till I could look on him without a
shudder or a fear.

I will not say that Donna Maria may not have passed across the picture
of my mind-drawn regrets; but if her form did indeed flit past, it was
to breathe a hope of some future meeting, some bright time to come, the
recompense of all our separation. And I thought with pride how much more
worthy of her would I be