y
wide to let out a cloud of smoke and a quiet laugh.

"Well, but you know," said Jeffson, apologetically, "a poor fellow
livin' out here in the wilderness ain't just always quite up in the
gee-graphical changes that take place on the airth. When was it that
they cut a ship canal up to the Himalayas, and in what sort o' craft did
ye sail there?"

"I didn't go for to say I sailed there at all," retorted Joe; "I walked
it partly, and went part o' the way on elephants an' horses, and went
aloft o' them there mountains pretty nigh as far up as the main-topmast
cross-trees of 'em; I've also slep' in the snow-huts of the Eskimos, an'
bin tossed about in a'most every sort o' craft that swims, but wot I've
got to say is this, that of all the things I ever did see, travellin' in
Californy beats 'em all to sticks and stivers."

"You've got a somewhat indefinite way of stating things," observed
Douglas. "D'ee mean to say that it beats them in a good or a bad way?"

"I means wot I says," replied Joe, with a stern expression of
countenance, as he relighted his pipe with the burnt end of a piece of
stick. "I means that it beats 'em _both_ ways;--if ye haven't got
schoolin' enough to understand plain English, you'd better go home again
an' get your edicashun completed."

"I'd do that at once, Joe, if I could only make sure o' finding the
schoolmaster alive that reared _you_."

"Ha! goot," observed the German. "Him must be von notable krakter."

Further conversation on this point was cut short by the sudden
appearance within the circle of light of an Indian, who advanced in a
half-crouching attitude, as if he feared a bad reception, yet could not
resist the attraction of the fire.

At that time some of the tribes in the neighbourhood of Bigbear Gully
had committed numerous depredations at the diggings, and had murdered
several white men, so that the latter had begun to regard the Red Men as
their natural enemies. Indeed some of the more violent among them had
vowed that they would treat them as vermin, and shoot down every native
they chanced to meet, whether he belonged to the guilty tribe or not.
The Indian who now approached the camp-fire of the white men knew that
he had good ground to fear the nature of his reception, and there is no
doubt that it would have been an unpleasant one had it not been for the
fact that his appearance was pitiable in the extreme.

He was squalid, dirty, and small, and so attenuated that i