valley of the Mississippi saw the honey-bee coming among them, they said, "Lo, the messenger of the white man! He is at hand; it is time for us to go!" Following the small-pox came the mistletoe into this desert land, and, fastening upon the mezquite trees, soon loaded them down so heavily with its parasitic growth, that they ceased to produce beans, and the Indians saw starvation before them. "Lo, the curse of the white man is upon us!" they cried, and sat down in despair. An old chief told them to burn each season the trees worst afflicted with the mistletoe, and perhaps the new ones which would spring up in their places might be free from the curse. This is what they were doing on that day when I stumbled among them; and a feeling of pity, deep and heartfelt, came over me, as I saw them standing around the burning trees, which had represented to them life, and hope, and abundance, and gazing with saddened, downcast, hopeless faces upon the consuming flames.
Lying here to-day in the fragrant shade of the blooming madroño, on the green-clad heights of the mountains of Napa, watching the smoke curling upward from my fragrant cigarrito, something—what it is I cannot tell—recalls all this to mind and memory; going backward through the years, reproduces the picture once again in all its startling, painful vividness. H-a-l-l-o-o-o-a there! Thank Heaven, an answering call comes back at last, and I see the Doctor, with his rifle on his shoulder, coming slowly up the mountain—and Bill is with him. Bill is my friend. Sun-burned American, never shall any man call you black
