Their women were beautiful in their wild and
natural, simple and savage beauty beyond anything
I have since seen, and I have gone well-nigh the
circuit of the earth since I first pitched camp at the
base of Shasta.
I came to sympathize thoroughly with the Indians. Perhaps, if I had been in a pleasant home, had friends, or even had the strength of will and capacity to lay hold of the world, and enter the conflict successfully, I might have thought much as others thought, and done as others have done ; but I was a gipsy, and had no home. I did not fear or shun toil, but I de spised the treachery, falsehood, and villany, practised in the struggle for wealth, and kept as well out of it as I could.
All these old ideas of mine seem very singular now for one so young. Yet it appears to me I always had them ; may be, I was born with a nature that did not fit into the mould of other minds. At all events, I began to think very early for myself, and nearly always as incorrectly as possible. Even at the time mentioned I had some of the thoughts of a man ; and at the present time, perhaps, I have many of the thoughts of a child. My life on horseback and among herds from the time I was old enough to ride a horse, had made me even still more thoughtful and solitary than was my nature, so that on some things I thought a great deal, or rather observed, while on others- practical things I never bestowed a moment s time. I had never been a boy, that is, an orthodox, old-
