Evangeline: a Tale of Acadie

Far in the West there lies a desert land, where the mountains / Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous summits. / Down from their jagged, deep ravines, where the gorge, like a gateway, / Opens a passage rude to the wheels of the emigrant's wagon, / Westward the Oregon flows and the Walleway and Owyhee. / Eastward, with devious course, among the Wind-river Mountains, / Through the Sweet-water Valley precipitate leaps the Nebraska; / And to the south, from Fontaine-qui-bout and the Spanish sierras, / Fretted with sands and rocks, and swept by the wind of the desert, / Numberless torrents, with ceaseless sound, descend to the ocean, / Like the great chords of a harp, in loud and solemn vibrations. / Spreading between these streams are the wondrous, beautiful prairies, / Billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine, / Bright with luxuriant clusters of roses and purple amorphas. / Over them wandered the buffalo herds, and the elk and the roebuck; / Over them wandered the wolves, and herds of riderless horses; / Fires that blast and blight, and winds that are weary with travel; / Over them wander the scattered tribes of Ishmael's children, / Staining the desert with blood; and above their terrible war-trails / Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture, / Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle, / By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens. / Here and there rise smokes from the camps of these savage marauders; / Here and there rise groves from the margins of swift-running rivers; / And the grim, taciturn bear, the anchorite monk of the desert, / Climbs down their dark ravines to dig for roots by the brook-side, / And over all is the sky, the clear and crystalline heaven, / Like the protecting hand of God inverted above them.

Into this wonderful land, at the base of the Ozark Mountains, / Gabriel far had entered, with hunters and trappers behind him. / Day after day, with their Indian guides, the maiden and Basil / Followed his flying steps, and thought each day to o'ertake him. / Sometimes they saw, or thought they saw, the smoke of his camp-fire / Rise in the morning air from the distant plain; but at nightfall, / When they had reached the place, they found only embers and ashes. / And, though their hearts were sad at times and their bodies were weary, / Hope still guided them on, as the magic Fata Morgana / Showed them her lakes of light, that retreated and vanished before them.