roducing the
smallest change. Long practised in the difficulties of that peculiar
species of travelling in which he was engaged, the squatter avoided
the more impracticable obstacles of their route by a sort of instinct,
invariably inclining to the right or left in season, as the formation of
the land, the presence of trees, or the signs of rivers forewarned him
of the necessity of such movements.

At length the hour arrived when charity to man and beast required a
temporary suspension of labour. Ishmael chose the required spot with his
customary sagacity. The regular formation of the country, such as it
has been described in the earlier pages of our book, had long been
interrupted by a more unequal and broken surface. There were, it is
true, in general, the same wide and empty wastes, the same rich and
extensive bottoms, and that wild and singular combination of swelling
fields and of nakedness, which gives that region the appearance of
an ancient country, incomprehensibly stripped of its people and their
dwellings. But these distinguishing features of the rolling prairies had
long been interrupted by irregular hillocks, occasional masses of rock,
and broad belts of forest.

Ishmael chose a spring, that broke out of the base of a rock some forty
or fifty feet in elevation, as a place well suited to the wants of his
herds. The water moistened a small swale that lay beneath the spot,
which yielded, in return for the fecund gift, a scanty growth of grass.
A solitary willow had taken root in the alluvion, and profiting by its
exclusive possession of the soil, the tree had sent up its stem far
above the crest of the adjacent rock, whose peaked summit had once
been shadowed by its branches. But its loveliness had gone with the
mysterious principle of life. As if in mockery of the meagre show of
verdure that the spot exhibited, it remained a noble and solemn monument
of former fertility. The larger, ragged, and fantastic branches still
obtruded themselves abroad, while the white and hoary trunk stood naked
and tempest-riven. Not a leaf, nor a sign of vegetation, was to be seen
about it. In all things it proclaimed the frailty of existence, and the
fulfilment of time.

Here Ishmael, after making the customary signal for the train to
approach, threw his vast frame upon the earth, and seemed to muse on the
deep responsibility of his present situation. His sons were not long in
arriving; for the cattle no sooner scented the fo