A thicket of cane-bushes.
1787. We lay by a large fire, in a thick cane brake.… I … often reposed in thick cane brakes to avoid the savages, who, I believe, often visited my camp, but, fortunately for me, in my absence.—Daniel Boon, in the American Museum, ii. 321–2.
1819. Large herds of cattle, which keep fat the year round on the range of cane-breaks.—B. Harding, ‘Tour through the Western Country,’ p. 13 (New London, Conn.).
1821. In the valley of the Arkansa, however, which is generally clad in rich forests and luxuriant cane brakes, prairies are seldom to be met with, and settlers have had recourse to clearing the land necessary for their plantations.—E. James, ‘Rocky Mountain Expedition, ii. 347 (Phila., 1823). (Italics in the original.)
1829. A man could not make three miles a day through a thick cane brake.… The burning of a cane brake makes the noise of a conflicting army, in which thousands of muskets are continually discharging.—Mass. Spy, June 3.
1834. The broken and incoherent sentences of Forrester, who dashed into speech at intervals with something of the fury of a wounded panther in a cane-brake.—W. G. Simms, ‘Guy Rivers,’ i. 153 (1837).
1835. They [the flames] first got into the cane-brake, crackling like a continued peal of musketry, and then burst into the wood of cotton trees over against us. .—C. J. Latrobe, ‘The Rambler in North America,’ i. 196 (N.Y.).
1838. On running through a cane-brake, the land over which he passed might be worthless.—Mr. Sevier in the U.S. Senate, April 9: Congressional Globe, p. 293.
