your subjects the Indians of the reservation, who glide among the
islets in their canoes and scratch their hides monkeywise by the beach.
A Sound Indian is unlovely and only by accident picturesque. His wife
drives the canoe, but he himself is so thorough a mariner that he can
spring up in his cockle-craft and whack his wife over the head with a
paddle without tipping the whole affair into the water. This I have seen
him do unprovoked. I fancy it must have been to show off before the
whites.

Have I told you anything about Seattle--the town that was burned out a
few weeks ago when the insurance men at San Francisco took their losses
with a grin? In the ghostly twilight, just as the forest fires were
beginning to glare from the unthrifty islands, we struck it--struck it
heavily, for the wharves had all been burned down, and we tied up where
we could, crashing into the rotten foundations of a boathouse as a pig
roots in high grass. The town, like Tacoma, was built upon a hill. In
the heart of the business quarters there was a horrible black smudge, as
though a Hand had come down and rubbed the place smooth. I know now what
being wiped out means. The smudge seemed to be about a mile long, and
its blackness was relieved by tents in which men were doing business
with the wreck of the stock they had saved. There were shouts and
counter-shouts from the steamer to the temporary wharf, which was laden
with shingles for roofing, chairs, trunks, provision-boxes, and all the
lath and string arrangements out of which a western town is made. This
is the way the shouts ran:--

"Oh, George! What's the best with you?"

"Nawthin'. Got the old safe out. She's burned to a crisp. Books all
gone."

"'Save anythin'?"

"Bar'l o' crackers and my wife's bonnet. Goin' to start store on them
though."

"Bully for you. Where's that Emporium? I'll drop in."

"Corner what used to be Fourth and Main--little brown tent close to
militia picquet. Sa-ay! We're under martial law, an' all the saloons are
shut down."

"Best for you, George. Some men gets crazy with a fire, an' liquor makes
'em crazier."

"'Spect any creator-condemned son of a female dog who has lost all his
fixin's in a conflagration is going to put ice on his head an' run for
Congress, do you? How'd you like us act?"

The Job's comforter on the steamer retired into himself.

"Oh George" dived into the bar for a drink.

P. S.--Among many curiosities I have unearthed one. It wa