Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/36



cold as the McCloud; but this last phenomenon I never witnessed. The changes however, whatever they are, are caused by some internal volcanic action of Mount Shasta, from which the stream flows in great springs.

The camp was but a temporary one, and pitched here for the purpose of gathering and drying a sort of mountain camas root from the low marshy springs of this region. This camas is a bulbus root shaped much like an onion, and is prepared for food by roasting in the ground, and is very nutritious. Sometimes it is kneaded into cakes and dried. In this state if kept dry it will retain its sweetness and fine properties for months.

I could not have been treated more kindly even at home. But Indian life and Indian diet are hardly suited to restore a shattered nervous system and or ganization so delicate as my own, and I got on slowly. Perhaps after all I only needed rest, and it is quite likely the Indians saw this, for rest I certainly had, such as I never had before or since. It was as near a life of nothingness down there in the deep forest as one well could imagine. There were no birds in the thicket about the camp, and you even had to go out and climb a little hill to get the sun.

This hill sloped off to the south with the woods open like a park, and here the children and some young women sported noiselessly or basked in the sun.

If there is any place outside of the tomb th