I remained I know not how long lying in a desponding, half insensible, state upon the grass.  Several hours must have elapsed; for when I got up, the sun was low in the western heavens.  My head was so weak and wandering, that I could not well explain to myself how it was that I had been thus riding after my own shadow.  Yet the thing was clear enough.  Without landmarks, and in the monotonous scenery of the prairie, I might have gone on for ever following my horses track, and going back when I thought I was going forwards, had it not been for the discovery of the tobacco paper.  I was, as I subsequently learned, in the Jacinto prairie, one of the most beautiful in Texas, full sixty miles long and broad, but in which the most experienced hunters never risked themselves without a compass.  It was little wonder then that I, a mere boy of two and twenty, just escaped from college, should have gone astray in it.

I now gave myself up for lost, and with the bridle twisted round my hand, and holding on as well as I could by the saddle and mane, I let my horse choose his own road.  It would perhaps have been better if I had done this sooner.  The beast’s instinct would probably have led him to some plantation.  When he found himself left to his own guidance he threw up his head, snuffed the air three or four times, and then turning round, set off in a contrary direction to that he was before going, and at such a brisk pace that it was as much as I could do to keep upon him.  Every jolt caused me so much pain that I was more than once tempted to let myself fall off his back.

At last night came, and thanks to the lasso, which kept my horse in awe, I managed to dismount and secure him.  The whole night through I suffered from racking pains in head, limbs, and body.  I felt as if I had been broken on the wheel; not an inch of my whole person but ached and smarted.  My hands were grown thin and transparent, my cheeks fallen in, my eyes deep sunk in their sockets.  When I touched my face I could feel the change that had taken place, and as I did so I caught myself once or twice laughing like a child—­I was becoming delirious.

In the morning I could scarcely rise from the ground, so utterly weakened and exhausted was I by my three days’ fasting, anxiety, and fatigue.  I have heard say that a man in good health can live nine days without food.  It may be so in a room, or a prison; but assuredly not in a Texian prairie.  I am quite certain that the fifth day would have seen the last of me.

I should never have been able to mount my mustang, but he had fortunately lain down, so I got into the saddle, and he rose up with me and started off of his own accord.  As I rode along, the strangest visions seemed to pass before me.  I saw the most beautiful cities that a painter’s fancy ever conceived, with towers, cupolas, and columns, of which the summits lost themselves in the clouds; marble basins and fountains of bright sparkling water, rivers