The howling serenades, the yelp ing screams,
Of the wild coyotes of the boundless plains
Are heard from Canada to Mexic realms,
From Northern mount to Southern hot domains,
Prowling at night, their dismal outcries warn
The settlers, that no Indian foes are near;
But when these cease, frontiersmen take alarm,
And arm to meet the tribesmen's fierce career.
Wide o'er Columbian plains their packs abound,
Beyond the Cascade Range; for there are spread
Free feasts of sage hare and the badger game,
And thick on shores are strewn the salmon dead.
Timid, they fly at near approach of man
And from the deer-hounds in their keen pursuit.
From Indian mustangs, when the savage tribes
Cast the long lariat, or their arrows shoot.
Those riders, in their headlong spurt of speed,
Stirr'd by the flute-like music of the hound,
May soon o'ertake them, but there's dangerous fall
When the swift horse may trip o'er rocky ground
In hole of prairie dog or squirrel mound.
White hunters, ranging the broad prairie plains,
Pitching the camp at foot of mountain height,
Are charm'd 'mid scenes where Nature reigns supreme.
'Mid the great forests and by streamlets bright,
They gaze o'er vales whose breaths of sweetest air
Blow o'er grass billows on from crest to crest,
Or made soft sighing through the willow bush,
Whose leaflets were by gliding streams carest;
Where voices of the night fill'd all the plain—
The night hawk, flitting on its dusky wings,
And the weird baying of the coyote packs,
Now far, now near, in fitful murmurings.
Slow pass'd the night; anon the gates of dawn
Swept back and the young day came dancing out,
And far o'er mountain peaks the breeze dispers'd
The silvery mist-wreaths in dissolving rout;
Abroad came creatures of the earth and air,
And all was life and motion o'er the earth;
Yet, far below, green valleys were asleep:
No light had touch'd, no breeze the foliage stirr'd,
The brook slipt on in shadow, without sound,
Nor yet was heard the song of early bird.
From some green slope a solitary cliff
Rear'd its proud crest above the valleys low,
While on horizon a long, glimmering file
Of craggy peaks and silvery summits glow,
All bath'd in purple tints and roseate hues,
The hues that Sierra Madre soft suffuse!
Here groups of scarlet cacti-blossoms gleam'd,
'Neath mesquit bushes, each a flaming ball,
While waxen flowerets, coral or deep red,
Bloom'd 'neath the clusters of amolias tall.
Years since, one Winter day, we join'd a group
Of hunters mustered on a wolf-hunt raid;
Thro' deep-heap'd snows our sledges plow'd their way,
O'er open prairies, or thro' bushy glade.
In circling, narrowing rings our hunters press'd,
Beating loud drum and sounding horn and trump;
Then, all concentrated in one open vale,
We drove the game from grass and thicket-clump,
Then hounds were loos'd to massacre the prey
For rifles were forbid in such close fray;
So, then, we slew with axe and club and spear,
The captur'd wolves, the foxes and the deer.
