lips. The buck sprang - it was only upward - there were not strength and vitality enough left to carry him forward, and with a snort of rage and defiance he fell dead. I expected Uncle Johnny to get on the rampage at such heedlessness; but the only remark he made, as he stepped forward and cut the animal's throat, was: "My bye, I thought you was a goner." At another time on the same hunt I have known him to travel miles out of his way to return some money paid him erroneously by a trader. Thus was presented often some such trait in this child of the forest and struggle. Brave, truthful, sincere, honest, self-sacrificing, and reverent: what more is required to make up the noblest specimen of manhood? Yet out of the woods he was almost an outlaw in the estimation of those who know him by the tales of bordermen we hear.

One incident of our hunt illustrates one of the causes which produce this impression. It also gives us an idea of the feeling which has produced so much hostility between the white man and the Indian, and which must be recognised in any attempt of our Government to cope with its Indian difficulties. In our travels after leaving the Sierras, our steps had been directed first southwestwardly, and then to the northwest again. We crossed over the valleys of the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers, then vast unoccupied plains, abounding with elk, deer, and antelopes, and swarming with geese and ducks and all manner of small game; now, occupied by the farmer and stock-raiser, cultivated, the home of plenty, from which the game has been entirely driven. Thence we passed up the Russian River Valley, one of the most beautiful and fertile valleys of that famed State, with a climate unexcelled and a productiveness unequalled. Then into the coast range, filled with bear and Indians, with the latter of whom we often had what the old man called "scrimmages." Of all the Indians of California the Klamath Indians are the noblest-looking, the finest formed and the best fighters. They numbered then nearly a thousand warriors, grand fellows, always on the war-path. In the year 1871, only twenty-one years after, I travelled over the same country with a friend, and the Klamath Indians had nearly disappeared. Their men were all old and infirm; their women simply hideous. They went about in bands of fifteen or twenty. There were no children with whom the glory of the tribe was to be in the future. Victims of the whites' cupidity and lust, they are being swept away.

One day after we had reached their territory we were lying under a tree, when suddenly the old man sprang to his feet, levelled his rifle, and was just in the act of firing, when I threw out the old Queen Anne, throwing his rifle up, and its contents were discharged in the air. "What on airth did you do that for?" thundered out Uncle Johnny in an exasperated tone of voice.

"Why, would you kill a helpless woman and child?" was my reply, in an equally indignant tone of voice, for I was horror-struck as I saw that unerring rifle aimed at an Indian squaw and her infant.

"Why, them was Injins!" said he, in a tone of amazement.

"But you don't war with and kill women and children, do you, if they are Indians?"

"Women and children! Call them varmints women and children!" and he seemed really amazed.

"Yes! women and children; human beings just like you and myself, only with a darker skin, and more ignorant, trained to defend themselves when attacked.”

"Why, Doc., them's worse than bars or wolves! When you find a nest of young bars or wolves, don't you kill the she-uns and every mother's cub? 'Cause you know they will grow up varmints, and have other varmints."

"But they are not varmints, nor wolves, nor bears. They have the same sense of right and justice as ourselves. They have the same resentments. If they are wronged they will retaliate. You would yourself; and why should we treat them worse than we would other human beings?"

"Wal, Doc., aint it the natur of a bar or a wolf to fight when it's attacked? It only has a hairy skin; and because it's his natur to fight, do you spar it? No; why these Ingins do more harm in one year than all the bars and wild beasts in a thousand. Ennyhow, you know what would become of us if they catched us."

"That is true, Uncle Johnny; but we have come upon their territory. We have taken their homes. You know what enormities have been committed upon them; how every feeling has been violated; how they have been dishonored, cheated, ill-used, and then murdered for retaliating."

All true, Doc, but they have got up their fight. They kill us every time they can. They are full of revenge; and we must sweep them away to have peace at all now."

"So, you think because we have injured them, and they have retaliated and are embittered still, we must punish them for the bitterness we have ourselves created?"

"Wal, Doc., mebby you're right; but still what are we to do if the Injins come now? What will you do?"

"Just what I have done since I have been with you-fight in selfdefence; but, with God's help, will never wantonly injure them."

"Wal, Doc.,. I hev allers thought it my dooty to my fellars and the children that are to come after me to do all I can to stop all such carryins on."

Whatever may be the logical strength of Uncle Johnny's doctrine, it is the established reasoning of most bordermen. There seems to be an undying antipathy between the two races which cannot be easily overcome. Bad white men are the cause of all the difficulties. The Indians, as a general rule, are not hostile at first. In my own experience I am forced to believe the Indians are seldom, if ever, the aggressors. It needs some overt act on the part of the whites to call out their antagonism, and they are capable of and often do exhibit acts of the highest moral heroism. Gratitude on the part of one of them saved my own life once, at a time when a deadly war was raging between the Humboldt Indians and the whites; and my own experiences have often been corroborated by others. Our Indian policy has been a curse to the red man, and to the whites too. Not so much as a policy as that the men who act as agents, and others, in

dealing with the Indians have shamefully violated their engagements, have falsified instruments of agreement between them, by inserting clauses that the Indians never intended should be there, and then calling on Government to interfere against the treaty-breaking Indians. We need a policy which shall protect the Indians as well as the white man, by taking them as minors under its guardianship, not allowing any contract to be valid except it be under the supervision of Government, and punishing severely any act of wrong and injustice done to the Indians on their own testimony. The general character of the Indians will compare favorably for veracity with those who bring charges against them.

Our hunt ended after thirteen months' duration. The life of a hunter is one of peril and exposure; but to one who has a leaning towards a vagabond life, it is delightful. Most men have a taste for the nomadic life in their nature; some very largely. Many a hunt, many a trout fishing, many days in the woods and on the plains have I spent during the last twenty-one years with Uncle Johnny; and though our lives have been as a general thing very far apart, yet the friendly feeling that first hunt engendered has never worn away. Twenty-one years! I am getting along myself. Uncle Johnny is seventy-four, as erect as ever, as gray as a badger. We have met almost yearly; met as the ships meet on the great waste of waters, exchanged greetings, renewed memories, bade each other God-speed, and then drifted away, each on his own errands of life and duty. Last fall duty called me to my old home in Baltimore. He heard it from my lips, and suddenly remembered he once had a home in the forests of Maine — fifty-four years since he saw it, since he had seen the familiar faces of his childhood days. His prudence had saved something in his later years-not much; but he thought he could spend it and the remainder of his days near his early home.

We came over the continent together. He felt the changes the iron horse had wrought on the plains almost as keenly as an Indian, and often felt like returning to his home in the Sierras. We arrived at New York on Friday Walking up Broadway from the Battery the next day, we passed Old Trinity Church, and determined our Sunday should be passed there. When the services commenced, as the sweet pure voices of the boy-choir were heard, subdued at first, Uncle Johnny's tall form was stretched to its utmost capacity as he strove to discover whence the sound proceeded. As the white-robed procession marched in, and their voices swelled out in louder strains in the beautiful processional hymn, he seemed deeply moved. His side-face was wet with falling tears. Soon his handkerchief was in requisition, and an unwonted sound broke on the ears of the worshippers there. The old man sat down; placing his head on the pew before him, his whole frame seemed convulsed with sobs. Those around noticed, but with respect, his deep emotion. The preacher's subject was the Fatherhood of God. The old man listened with rapt attention, but his whole heart seemed full when the boys sang. We walked from the church in silence for some distance. The old man took me by the coat. His voice was tremulous with emotion. "Doc, don't you think we will sing like that when we git up thar?" pointing upward.

"I hope so, Uncle Johnny." Another silence. We were to dine together and separate -he for Maine, I for Baltimore. His last words as we parted were, "Doc, I hain't killed nary Injin sense that big hunt except when I had to in a squar fight, nor nary Injin wimmen and children-human beins at all; nor I ain't swore sense you told me the old man up thar didn't like it. I'm glad I cum arter all. I'm glad I hearn them children sing. I'm glad I hearn that preacher chap say God is our Father. I'm glad I'm going to see the folks. I'm glad you wurn't an old hunter. God bless you, old Dcc." "God bless you too, Uncle Johnny," and we shook hands and parted.

B. R.

BALDE'S DIRGE ON THE DEATH OF THE EMPRESS

LEOPOLDINA.

(CHOREA MORTUALIS SIVE LESSUS.)

JACOB BALDE was born in Alsace in 1603, entered the order of the Jesuits in 1624, and died in 1668. His Latin poetry is very highly thought of in Germany, and has been enthusiastically praised by such critics as Herder and A. W. Schlegel. The dirge which follows was written to celebrate the death of the Empress Leopoldina, wife of Ferdinand the Third, who died in child-birth at Vienna. after one year's marriage, Aug. 7th, 1649. "The great commonplaces of death," says Archbishop Trench, "which if always old are yet always new, have seldom clothed themselves in grander form, or found a more solemn utterance, than they do in this sublime poem "

I cannot hope that I have more than very imperfectly succeeded in reproducing this magnificent lyric in the English verses which I offer below. The poem is the most difficult one to translate that I have ever met with. But its charm was too tempting to be resisted; and if my version shall give to English readers some conception, however inadequate, of its remarkable beauty, my end will be fully attained.

The allusion in the twenty-second verse is to the recent Swedish invasion of Germany. "Only four years before, the smoke of the Swedish watch-fires had been visible from the ramparts of Vienna."