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As they cleared the shelter of the land, the southerly breeze coming with some force across the open sea caught the cutter, and she lay over in a way to inspire Helen with alarm; she was about to let go the tiller, when Hazel seized it, accidentally inclosing her hand under the grasp of his own, as he pressed the tiller hard to port.
In 1862, in spite of the Southern Members of Congress, who wished a more southerly route, it was decided to lay the road between the forty-first and forty-second parallels. President Lincoln himself fixed the end of the line at Omaha, in Nebraska. The work was started at once and pursued with true American energy. The rapidity with which it went on did not injuriously affect its good execution.
Upon moving on this morning we passed towards the Mount Barren ranges for ten miles through the same sterile country, and then observing a watercourse coming from the hills, I became apprehensive I should experience some difficulty in crossing it near the ranges, from their rocky and precipitous character, and at once turned more southerly to keep between the sea and a salt lake, into which the stream emptied itself.
Thus, again, the northerly winds when stormy, and especially in winter, tend to depress the temperature very suddenly; and thus, too, the southerly and south-westerly winds, which raise the temperature during their prevalence to from eighty-eight to ninety-eight degrees, seldom last longer than a few hours; insomuch that "their disagreeable heat and dryness may be escaped by carefully closing the windows and doors of apartments at their onset."
While the men were taking their stand at the spot designated by the hunter, Codman was seen mounting a conspicuous logheap at the southerly end of the field; and two more men, at the same time, made their appearance on the tops of different piles on opposite sides of the lot, and nearly abreast of the place where the expectant company were collected and standing, silently awaiting the commencement of the promised ceremony.
And of course, as the most immediate topic, they spoke of the gale that had been blowing across London all the afternoon and evening; for the southerly winds that had prevailed in the morning had freshened up and increased in violence until a veritable hurricane was now raging, threatening roofs, chimneys, and lamp-posts, to say nothing of the whirled and driven and bewildered foot-passengers.
We were cutting through scrub all day, intersected by deep gullies and rocky hills; we crossed a small river, with very uneven rocky bottom, about three feet deep; where we crossed it, it was running southerly, and as there had been a heavy storm a few days previously, the current was rapid; five of our horses fell in crossing it the one carrying my specimens in a very bad place; we were obliged to cut the girths, and before I could secure his load two bags of seeds were washed away; we tied our horses to trees, and encamped in a thick bamboo scrub by the side of the river.
We embarked from Bombay, February 9th, on board the P. and O. steamship Kashgar for Suez, a voyage of three thousand miles across the Sea of Arabia and the Indian Ocean, through the Straits of Babelmandeb and the entire length of the Red Sea. The most southerly point of the voyage took us within fourteen degrees of the equator, and consequently into an extremely warm temperature.
Others then joined the conversation, and Gabriel and I returned to our friends as silently as we left them. Half an hour afterwards we heard the galloping of our horses, in a southerly direction, and Gabriel going once more to reconnoitre, perceived the band taking another course, towards the east, leaving, as they had proposed, three of their men behind them.
Their dark-skinned escort, mounted on wiry ponies, bent their course in a southerly direction. The redskins eyed with amusement the queer-clad strangers whom they were guiding. These were ignorant of the ways of the wild prairie country and badly equipped to face its difficulties.
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