Here we remained a couple of hours, to rest our weary animals and find the trail leading up the opposite side.  This we discovered, and, after great exertions, succeeded in clambering up to the top, where we again found ourselves upon a smooth and level prairie.  On looking backs I shuddered to behold the frightful chasm we had so successfully passed, and thought it a miracle that we had got safely across; but a very short time afterwards, I was convinced that the feat we had just accomplished was a mere nothing.

After giving our animals another rest, we resumed our journey across the dreary prairie.  Not a tree or bush could be seen in any direction.  A green carpeting of short grass was spread over the vast scene, with naught else to relieve the sight.

People may talk of the solitude of forests as much as they please, but there is a company in trees which one misses upon the prairie.  It is in the prairie, with its ocean-like waving of grass, like a vast sea without landmarks, that the traveller feels a sickly sensation of loneliness.  There he feels as if not in the world, although not out of it; there he finds no sign or trace to tell him that there are, beyond or behind him, countries where millions of his own kindred are living and moving.  It is in the prairie that man really feels that he is—­alone.

We rode briskly along till sun-down, and encamped by the side of a small water-hole, formed by a hollow in the prairie.  The mustangs, as well as the deer and antelopes, had left this part of the prairie, driven out, doubtless, by the scarcity of water.  Had it not been for occasional showers, while travelling through this dreary waste, we should most inevitably have perished, for even the immense chasms had no water in them, except that temporarily supplied by the rains.

CHAPTER XXII.

The morning broke bright and cloudless, the sun rising from the horizon in all his majesty.  Having saddled our horses, we pursued our journey in a north-east direction; but we had scarcely proceeded six miles before we suddenly came upon an immense rent or chasm in the earth, far exceeding in depth the one we had so much difficulty in crossing the day before.  We were not aware of its existence until we were immediately upon its brink, when a spectacle exceeding in grandeur anything we had previously witnessed burst upon our sight Not a tree or bush, no outline whatever, marked its position or course, and we were lost in amazement and wonder as we rode up and peered into the yawning abyss.