knew could not be attempted from their opponents in front. The bombs
burst, the wheels threw their large circles of coloured sparks, and the
savages gazed in silent admiration. But their astonishment was followed
by fear of supernatural agency; confusion spread among them, and their
silence was at last broken by hundreds of loud voices! The moment had
now come; the two Shoshone war-parties rushed upon their terrified
victims, and an hour afterwards, when the moon rose and shone above the
prairie, its mild beams were cast upon four hundred corpses. The whole
of the Bonnax and Umbiqua party were entirely destroyed. The Callapoos
suffered but little, having dispersed, and run towards the sea-shore at
the beginning of the affray.

Thus ended the great league against the Shoshones, which tradition will
speak of in ages yet to come. But these stirring events were followed by
a severe loss to me. My father, aged as he was, had shown a great deal
of activity during the last assault, and he had undergone much privation
and fatigue: his high spirit sustained him to the very last of the
struggle; but when all was over, and the reports of the rifles no
longer whizzed to his ears, his strength gave way, and, ten days after
the last conflict, he died of old age, fatigue, and grief. On the
borders of the Pacific Ocean, a few miles inland, I have raised his
grave. The wild flowers that grow upon it are fed by the clear waters of
the Nu eleje sha wako, and the whole tribe of the Shoshones will long
watch over the tomb of the Pale-face from a distant land, who was once
their instructor and their friend.

As for my two friends, Gabriel and Roche, they had been both seriously
wounded, and it was a long time before they were recovered.

We passed the remainder of the summer in building castles in the air for
the future, and at last agreed to go to Monterey to pass the winter.
Fate, however, ordered otherwise, and a succession of adventures, the
current of which I could not oppose, forced me through many wild scenes
and countries, which I have yet to describe.

CHAPTER XI.

At the beginning of the fall, a few months after my father's death, I
and my two comrades, Gabriel and Roche, were hunting in the rolling
prairies of the South, on the eastern shores of the Buona Ventura. One
evening we were in high spirits, having had good sport. My two friends
had entered upon a theme which they could never exhaust, one pleasantly
narrating