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Fortunately, they struck upon one of the "streets" made by the buffaloes, as in thousands they followed one after the other, crushing their way through the cane-brakes. These animals were, by instinct, good engineers, and invariably selected the most favorable routes. Still the voyagers were often compelled to wade through deep mire, and their sufferings were at times severe.
Numerous islands are interspersed through this river; and from the mouth of the Ohio, tall cotton-wood trees and cane-brakes grow in immense quantities along the banks; the latter, being evergreens, have a pleasing effect in the winter season. The windings of the Mississippi are, like those of the Ohio, constant, but not so serpentine, and some of them are of immense magnitude.
When the horse sinks and the rider leaves the saddle, the only thing he can do is to return back upon his track; but let him beware of these solitary small patches of briars, generally three or four yards in circumference, which are spread here and there on the edges of the cane-brakes, for there he will meet with deadly reptiles and snakes unknown in the prairies; such as the grey-ringed water mocassin, the brown viper, the black congo with red head and the copper head, all of whom congregate and it may be said make their nests in these little dry oases, and their bite is followed by instantaneous death.
It contains the coarsest and most uneatable of fish, such as the cat-fish and such genus, and as you descend, its banks are occupied with the fetid alligator, while the panther basks at its edge in the cane-brakes, almost impervious to man.
I was soon in the meadow, leaping ditches, rustling through cane-brakes, and climbing up to mossy arches to find out the fountain of Numa's nymph; while my companion, who had less taste for the romantic, looked on complacently from the leeward side of the hill.
The man's thoughts went back to the Mississippi, to cane-brakes and bayous and long levees; and the boy's mind perused the road before him. "When I get to Richmond," he suddenly announced, "I am going to find a place where they sell books. I have a dollar." The hunter put his hand in his pouch, drew out a shining coin, and tossed it across the fire. "There's another," he said. "Good Spanish!
Suffice it to say that I made my way back through the swamps, the forests, the cane-brakes of the Indian country, along the Natchez trail to Nashville, across the barrens to Harrodstown in Kentucky, where I spent a week in that cabin which had so long been for me a haven of refuge. Dear Polly Ann!
And another, more general: "Along come the jailer About 'leven o'clock, Bunch o' keys in his right hand, The jailhouse do'h was locked.... 'Cheer up, you pris'ners, I heard that jailer say, 'You got to go to the cane-brakes Foh ninety yeahs to stay!" As you can guess, most of these jail songs and ballads of the underworld could only be printed in asterisks.
"Their teachers had been woods and rills, The silence, that is in the starry sky; The sleep, that is among the lonely hills." They advanced into Kentucky so far, as to their imaginations with the fresh and luxuriant beauty of its lawns, its rich cane-brakes and flowering forests. To them it was a terrestrial paradise for it was full of game.
And so these pioneers and the soldiers set forth on their way out of the land that is now Tennessee, to return no more; wending down among the sun-flooded cane-brakes, and anon following the trail through the dense, dark, grateful shades of the primeval woods.
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