Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/401

 ng tide.

I am now in my new home where I have rested and written this history of my life among the Indians of Mount Shasta. I have seen enough of cities and civilization too much. I can endure storms, floods, earthquakes, but not this rush and crush and crowd ing of men, this sort of moral cannibalism, where souls eat souls, where men kill each other to get their places. I have returned to my mountains. I have room here. No man wants my place, there is no rivalry, no jealousy; no monster will eat me up while I sleep, no man will stab me in the back when I stoop to drink from the spring.

And yet how many noble and generous men have I met away out in the sea of human life, far from my snowy island in the clouds ! Possibly, after all, I am here, not that I love society less, but the solitude more.

The heart takes root like a tree when it is young and strong, and fresh and growing. It shoots tendrils like a vine. You cannot tear it from its place at will. You may be very strong ; you may even uproot and transplant, but it will never flourish in the new place or be satisfied.

We have a cabin here among the oaks and the pines, on a bench of the mountain, looking down on the Sacramento valley, a day's ride distant.

A stream, white as cotton, is foaming among the mossy rocks in a canon below the house, with balm and madrono on its banks, and I have some horses on the plain below. I have cattle on the ma