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ave enough to sound the depths of that dreadful sepulchre. Day after day canoes crowded about the mouth of the cave, and still the west wind blew, and still the sighs and moans continued to strike the souls of the trembling warriors. Finally, no canoe dared approach the spot. In paddling past they would always veer their canoes seaward, and hurry past with all the speed they could command. Centuries passed away; the level of the lake had sunk many feet; the last scions of the O-kak-oni-tas and the Gra-sop-o-itas had mouldered many years in the burying-grounds of their sires, and a new race had usurped their old hunting grounds. Still no one had ever entered the haunted cave. One day, late in the autumn of 1849, a company of emigrants on their way to California, were passing, toward evening, the month of the cavern, and hearing a strange, low, mournful sigh, seeming to issue thence, they landed their canoe and resolved to solve the mystery. Lighting some pitch-pine torches, they proceeded cautiously to explore the cavern. For a long time they could discern nothing. At length, in the furthest corner of the gloomy recess, they found two human skeletons, with their bony arms entwined, and their fleshless skulls resting upon each other's bosoms. The lovers are dead, but the old cave still echoes with their dying sobs. II.--DICK BARTER'S YARN; OR, THE LAST OF THE MERMAIDS. Well, Dick began, you see I am an old salt, having sailed the seas for more than forty-nine years, and being entirely unaccustomed to living upon the land. By some accident or other, I found myself, in the winter of 1849, cook for a party of miners who were sluicing high up the North Fork of the American. We had a hard time all winter, and when spring opened, it was agreed that I and a comrade named Liehard should cross the summit and spend a week fishing at the lake. We took along an old Washoe Indian, who spoke Spanish, as a guide. This old man had formerly lived on the north margin of the lake, near where Tahoe City is now situated, and was perfectly familiar with all the most noted fishing grounds and chief points of interest throughout its entire circuit. We had hardly got started before he commenced telling us of a remarkable struggle, which he declared had been going on for many hundred years between a border tribe of Indians and the inhabitants of the lake, whom he designated as Water-men, or "_hombres de las aguas_." On asking if he
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