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we could not all stand upon this hill ; now we are all in one little cawel;" and here he made a solemn sweep with his arm, which was very grand. Then after a pause he said : u Once I had seven wives, now I have only two."

At midnight, with solemn good-nights, the men arose one by one and retired. Over all things there hung a gloom. I went out into the village of a dozen houses that crouched down under the dense black pines. What a glorious moon! Only such a moon as California can afford. A long white cloud of swans stretched overhead, croaking dolefully enough ; the sea of evergreen pines that rolled about the bluff and belted the base of Shasta was sable as a pall, but the snowy summit in the splendours of the moon, flashed like a pyramid of silver! All these mountains, all these mighty forests, were to me as a schoolboy's play-ground, the playmates gone, the master dead!