alized, and seems to care but little what becomes of his
flock. He says that since the boss has failed to feed him he is not
rightly bound to feed the sheep, and swears that no decent white man can
climb these steep mountains on mutton alone. "It's not fittin' grub for
a white man really white. For dogs and coyotes and Indians it's
different. Good grub, good sheep. That's what I say." Such was Billy's
Fourth of July oration.

_July 5._ The clouds of noon on the high Sierra seem yet more
marvelously, indescribably beautiful from day to day as one becomes
more wakeful to see them. The smoke of the gunpowder burned yesterday on
the lowlands, and the eloquence of the orators has probably settled or
been blown away by this time. Here every day is a holiday, a jubilee
ever sounding with serene enthusiasm, without wear or waste or cloying
weariness. Everything rejoicing. Not a single cell or crystal unvisited
or forgotten.

_July 6._ Mr. Delaney has not arrived, and the bread famine is sore. We
must eat mutton a while longer, though it seems hard to get accustomed
to it. I have heard of Texas pioneers living without bread or anything
made from the cereals for months without suffering, using the
breast-meat of wild turkeys for bread. Of this kind they had plenty in
the good old days when life, though considered less safe, was fussed
over the less. The trappers and fur traders of early days in the Rocky
Mountain regions lived on bison and beaver meat for months.
Salmon-eaters, too, there are among both Indians and whites who seem to
suffer little or not at all from the want of bread. Just at this moment
mutton seems the least desirable of food, though of good quality. We
pick out the leanest bits, and down they go against heavy disgust,
causing nausea and an effort to reject the offensive stuff. Tea makes
matters worse, if possible. The stomach begins to assert itself as an
independent creature with a will of its own. We should boil lupine
leaves, clover, starchy petioles, and saxifrage rootstocks like the
Indians. We try to ignore our gastric troubles, rise and gaze about us,
turn our eyes to the mountains, and climb doggedly up through brush and
rocks into the heart of the scenery. A stifled calm comes on, and the
day's duties and even enjoyments are languidly got through with. We chew
a few leaves of ceanothus by way of luncheon, and smell or chew the
spicy monardella for the dull headache and stomach-ache that now
lightens