The white men in her absence had made another
successful campaign against her people. They had
become dispirited, and, never over-provident, finding
the country overrun, the game made wild and scarce,
and the fish failing to come up the muddied Sacra
mento, they had neglected to prepare for winter, and
so had perished by whole villages.
These singular people perish so easily from con tact with the whites, that they seem to me like the ripened fruit ready to fall at the first shaking.
She had found none of her tribe till she passed away on to the Tula lakes, and then of all her family found only two brothers. These, with some young warriors, had now come with her on her return.
They dismounted and built a fire under the trees and apart from us, and only slowly came to com municate, to smoke, and show any hospitality at all. Paquita was all kindness ; but she had become a woman now; the state of things was changed. Then the eyes of her sober, savage brothers who could ill brook the presence of the white man, much less look with favour on familiarities were upon her, and she became the quiet, silent Indian woman, instead of the lively little maiden who had frolicked on the hill- sides and wandered through the woods the year before.
They remained camped here many days. Klamat took the young chiefs up to the mine, only a little crevice picked out in the rotten quartz, and they looked at it long and curiously. Then they picked
