Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/39

 boughs ;

what a healthy breath of pine ! All the long sweet moonlight nights the magnificent forest, warm and mellow-like from sunshine gone away, gave out odours like burnt offerings from censers swinging in some mighty cathedral.

If I were to look back over the chart of my life for happiness, I should locate it here if anywhere. It is true that there was a little cast of concern in all this about the future, and some remorse for wasted time ; and my life, I think, partook of the Indian s melan choly, which comes of solitude and too much thought, but the memory of these few weeks always appeals to my heart, and strikes me with a peculiar gentle ness and uncommon delight.

The Indians were not at war with the whites, nor were they particularly at peace. In fact, they assert that there has never been any peace since they or their fathers can remember. The various tribes, sometimes at war, were also then at peace, so that nothing whatever occurred to break the calm repose of the golden autumn.

The mountain streams went foaming down among the boulders between the leaning walls of yew and cedar trees toward the Sacramento. The partridge whistled and called his flock together when the sun went down ; the brown pheasants rustled as they ran in strings through the long brown grass, but nothing else was heard. The Indians, always silent, are un usually so in autumn. The majestic march of the season seems to make them still. They moved