The flashing cascade of his mane,
the curving comet of his tail, invested him with housings more
resplendent than gold and silver-beaters could have furnished him.
A most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen,
western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters
revived the glories of those primeval times when Adam walked
majestic as a god, bluff-bowed and fearless as this mighty steed.
Whether marching amid his aides and marshals in the van of
countless cohorts that endlessly streamed it over the plains,
like an Ohio; or whether with his circumambient subjects browsing
all around at the horizon, the White Steed gallopingly reviewed
them with warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness;
in whatever aspect he presented himself, always to the bravest
Indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe.
Nor can it be questioned from what stands on legendary record
of this noble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly,
which so clothed him with divineness; and that this divineness
had that in it which, though commanding worship, at the same
time enforced a certain nameless terror.
But there are other instances where this whiteness loses
all that accessory and strange glory which invests it in
the White Steed and Albatross.
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