urled him away with a yell of execration and ran and
threw his offering into the flames. Squaws, even more frenzied,
wildly flung upon the pyre all they had in the world--their dearest
ornaments, their gaudiest dresses, their strings of glittering
shells. Screaming, wailing, tearing their hair, beating their
breasts in their mad and insensate infatuation, some of them would
have cast themselves bodily into the flaming ruins and perished with
the chief had they not been restrained by their companions. Then the
bright, swift flames, with their hot tongues, licked this "cold
obstruction" into chemic change, and the once "delighted spirit" of
the savage was borne up. * * *

It seems as if the savage shared in Shakspeare's shudder at the
thought of rotting in the dismal grave, for it is the one passion of
his superstition to think of the soul, of his departed friend set
free and purified by the swift purging heat of the flames not
dragged down to be clogged and bound in the mouldering body, but
borne up in the soft, warm chariots of the smoke toward the
beautiful sun, to bask in his warmth and light, and then to fly away
to the Happy Western Land. What wonder if the Indian shrinks with
unspeakable horror from the thought of _burying his friend's
soul!_--of pressing and ramming down with pitiless clods that inner
something which once took such delight in the sweet light of the
sun! What wonder if it takes years to persuade him to do otherwise
and follow our custom! What wonder if even then he does it with sad
fears and misgivings! Why not let him keep his custom! In the
gorgeous landscapes and balmy climate of California an Indian
incremation is as natural to the savage as it is for him to love the
beauty of the sun. Let the vile Esquimaux and the frozen Siberian
bury their dead if they will; it matters little, the earth is the
same above as below; or to them the bosom of the earth may seem even
the better; but in California do not blame the savage if he recoils
at the thought of going underground! This soft pale halo of the
lilac hills--ah, let him console himself if he will with the belief
that his lost friend enjoys it still! The narrator concluded by
saying that they destroyed full $500 worth of property. "The
blankets," said he with a fine Californian scorn of much absurd
insensibility to such a good bargain, "the blankets that the
American offere