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are several ways of making these deposits. The first requisite is generally to protect the food against wild animals. Poles eight or ten feet high are set upright, and a rude box is made at the top, where the food can be placed. Wolves and foxes. are the principal four-footed thieves; they cannot climb, and therefore anything protected in this way is safe from their depredations. Sometimes a hole is made in the ground, and. the deposit is placed within it. This can only be safely done in winter, as the soft earth in summer can be dug up by the enterprising and keen-scented animals with very little trouble. A hole in winter can be made secure by pouring water over the replaced earth, and allowing it to freeze. Wolves and foxes can do many things, but they have not yet invented any way to dig through frozen ground. They are wise enough not to attempt it, as they would need a new set of paws every half hour if they followed digging in frozen earth as a means of livelihood.

Baron Wrangell, Dr. Kane, and other arctic explorers, when travelling on the ice of the Polar Sea, used to make holes in the bergs and hummocks, and sometimes in the level ice, which frequently gets a thickness of eight or ten feet. After they had made the deposit in a hole of this sort, they would fit a block of ice as nearly as possible to the opening. After inserting the block they poured water into the interstices, and allowed it to freeze, so as to make the place as solid and even as ever. This was a sufficient protection against small animals, but not always against polar bears. These huge beasts would scent out the food, and with their powerful claws they managed to dig into the ice, and help themselves. Even if the food had been put into strong boxes before it was deposited, the beasts did not seem to be hindered in getting at it, as they would break the boxes as easily as a rat would open an egg-shell. Dr. Kane once tried the plan of sealing the food in sheet iron cans pointed at the ends. Sometimes. the bears tossed these cans a while, and then abandoned them; but they generally managed to throw them about with sufficient violence to break the shell and reach the contents.

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HONEST ABORIGINALS.

A healthy and full-grown polar bear is a powerful beast, and has no respect for the laws affecting the ownership of property.

In the extreme north deposits of food are in much greater danger from four-footed beasts than from men. In the first place, the beasts are much more numerous than men, and consequently want more to eat. Men are not very likely, in those wild countries, to come near the deposits, especially in arctic explorations; and even when they find them they are not generally in the habit of stealing. The Esquimaux of the region where Dr. Kane made his explorations are somewhat thievish when they have the opportunity, but the natives of Northern Asia have a high reputation for honesty. There are some tribes that have never learned to steal; they have had very little intercourse with white men, and are thoroughly uncivilized. As an illustration of this barbarous honesty, I will give my own experience among the Koraks of Northeastern Siberia.

My first acquaintance with them was on the shores of the Okhotsk Sea, where they had assembled with their herds of reindeer. When we went ashore we managed somehow to wet our blankets, and I hung mine up to dry. I expressed my fears that the blankets would be stolen by some of the Koraks, but was told that everything would be safe. When we camped at night, my blankets were dry, and I slept in them. But I forgot the blanket-straps, and there they hung in the open air all night, and all the next day.

Now, it is a moral or an immoral certainty that a pair of leather straps, new, and in good condition, in almost any other country would have been taken in hand by somebody who couldn't bear to see them unused. But when I finally thought of my straps, I found them hanging where I had left them thirty hours before, in full view of a dozen or more natives, who were dressed in skins, and didn't know anything more about civilization and the customs of fashionable society than a horse knows about running a sewing-machine.

On our western plains the custom of concealing articles in

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the ground prevails over any other mode. The Indians have long practised it, and they manage it so skilfully that it is next to impossible to detect them. The early French settlers and explorers learned the practice from the Indians, and the name they gave to a place of concealment "cache," from

cacher, to conceal has been adopted into the language of all plainsmen, of whatever nationality. So well is this word known that many frontier Americans use it in preference to words in their own language having the same meaning. A frontiers-man will speak of finding a place where a squirrel had cached a peck of nuts, or will tell you that he cached his bowie knife in his boot-leg rather than carry it at his waist-belt.

My first acquaintance with a cache on the plains was in the vicinity of Fort Kearney. Our party was camped near a half dozen men who were returning from Salt Lake City, and had lost three of their oxen. We struck up an acquaintance, and in the evening invited them to sit around our fire, where we exchanged news and stories, they telling us of Ctah, and we telling them about the States or "God's Country," as one of them called it. "Stranger," said he, "if ever I get back to God's Country, and you catch me again on these yere plains, you may just shoot me for a prairie dog. I've seen all I want of this yere living, and don't hanker for no more of it. I'm a going back where I can have a square meal at a table, and drink whiskey that wouldn't burn a hole through an old boot in five minutes."

We were not bountifully supplied with the necessaries of life, but we felt liberal, and ventured to offer a drink of whiskey to each of the strangers. They took it as unhesitatingly as a kitten would take a saucer of new milk, and we became friends in a short time. When we separated, one of the eastward-bound travellers said,

"May be you'll run short of flour before you get to the mountains, and a little would help you along. Now, we had to lighten up just this side of the Platte crossing, where we lost two of our oxen. We couldn't find anybody to sell to, and as we didn't like to throw things away altogether, we

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HOW TO CONCEAL FLOUR.

cached some of them. Next day we met a man one of us knew, and we sold him all the caches but one, and told him where to find them. But there was one bag of flour in a cache away from the rest, and he didn't want no flour; so we didn't tell him where it was."

We offered to buy the flour, but the men would not listen to the proposition.

"It's Utah flour," said one of them, " and isn't very good. The sack is small, and the whole lot wouldn't be worth a great deal; but you can't buy it. You've treated us handsome, and we're not going to be rattlesnakes. We want you to take that flour, and you shan't pay for it."

We thanked them heartily, and proffered another drink, which was accepted and swallowed.

"About five miles this side of the old crossing of the Platte," one of the strangers continued, after wiping the drops of whiskey from his lips, "you will come to a dry creek. There's a small clump of willows on your right hand, and mighty small willows they are too; and on the left side, dozen yards off the road, there are three buffalo heads piled up, with a sage bush sticking in the top one. Now, you go up the creek past these yere buffalo heads about fifty yards, and you'll see a grave with a little board at one end. On the board are some words which we cut, that says, 'J. MEANS, SALT LAKE, 34 YEARS.' Now, there ain't no J. Means there, but there is a sack of flour, and you'll find it by digging."

We made a memorandum of the direction, and soon after retired to sleep. In the morning we broke camp, and continued our journey, keeping the cache constantly in mind. When we reached the spot indicated, we opened the grave, and found the sack of flour, as our friends of a night had told us we should find it. The soil where it lay was quite dry, and the flour might have been left there for months without serious injury, beyond growing a little musty.

A grave is regarded with respect by nearly all white men and by most savages. Consequently a cache is frequently made in the form of a grave. A head-board bearing the

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name, residence, and age of a fictitious dead man, serves to complete the deception, and is likewise useful in describing the cache so that it can be found. All sorts of articles can be placed in the grave, provided they are not of a character to attract wild animals and cause them to dig. In certain localities, the animals, when hungry, will dig into a real grave, and exhume the body to devour it. Thus it happens that the fact that a mound has not been disturbed by beasts sometimes reveals its character to a keen-eyed observer, and tells him that it is a cache, containing something else than the remains of a luckless traveller.

In a journey from Denver to New Mexico, in the autumn of 1860. our party contained one man whose appetite for whiskey was of the keenest and most insatiable. In making up our outfit, we had left a portion of the purchases to him, and he had bought about six times as much fire-water as we really needed. On the first and second day he managed to get as drunk as a Tammany repeater at election time, and was neither ornamental nor useful. On the second night, while he was sleeping, and possibly dreaming of a paradise where there were rivers of pure Bourbon, and no charge to bathers and drinkers, we arranged a plan to bring him to grief. We took a keg of whiskey from our wagon, and cached it a little way from camp. We threw the dirt into the creek, and built a fire over the place of concealment, so that there was no trace of what we had done. In the morning we kept him away from the wagon until we were several miles on the road, and as he had a bottle at his command he did not discover the loss until night.

But when he did discover it, there was trouble in the camp. We dared not tell the truth, for fear he would insist upon returning to recover the treasure. So we feigned ignorance, thought it must have been lost on the road, or left in Denver, or, possibly, the driver had stolen it. We were all certain that it had not been left at the camp, as we had followed the universal custom of emigrants on the plains, and carefully examined the ground after the wagon had started.