customs and proprieties of a half, and hence tyran
nical, civilization ; nothing, it seemed to me now, but
rest, freedom, absolute independence.
Did I dread and fear the primeval curse that God has put upon all men, and so seek to hide away from Him in the dark deep forests of Shasta ?
I think not. I think rather that all men have more or less of the Arab in their natures ; and but for the struggles for gold, the eddies and currents of commerce, and the emulation of men in art, and the like, we should soon become gipsies, Druids, and wanderers in the wild and fragrant woods that would then repossess the lands.
Maybe after a while, when the children of men are tired and weary of the golden toy they will throw it away, rise , up and walk out into the woods, never more to return to cities, to toil, to strife, to thraldom.
But the Indian s life to an active mind is monoto nous, and so I found it there; listless, dull, and almost melancholy. We rode, we fished, we hunted, and hunted, and fished, and rode, and that was nearly all we could do by day. If, however, we had no intense delights we had no great concern. We dreamed dreams and built castles higher than the blue columns of smoke that moved towards the heavens through the dense black boughs above. And so the seasons wore away.
Under all this, of course, there was another current, deep and exhaustless. Indians have their loves, and as they have but little else, these fill up
