rls gathering acorns. They were up in the oaks, and half covered in the mistletoe. They would beat off the acorns with sticks, or cut off the little branches with tomahawks, and the older squaws gathered them from the ground, and threw them over their shoulders in baskets borne by a strap around the forehead. I must here expose a popular delusion.
I have heard parents insist that their girls should wear shoes, and tight ones at that, in childhood, so that their feet should be small and neat when grown. Now, I am bound to say that these Indian women, who never wear anything closer than a moccasin or Mexican sandal, and not half of the time either of the two, have the smallest and prettiest feet, and hands also, I have ever seen.
These few Indian girls were pretty. Some of them were painted red ; and their splendid flow of intense black hair showed well in the yellow leaves and the rich green mistletoe. Some warriors watched a little way off on a hill, lest some savage border ruffians, under a modern Romulus, should swoop down upon them and carry them off.
We rode under the oaks and they laughed play fully and crept closer into the leaves. One little sun- browned savage pelted Limber Jim with acorns. Then he opened his mouth and laughed, and opened his hands and let go his reins, and rolled and shook in his saddle as if possessed by an earthquake.
Toward evening, in the bend of Pit river, we came upon an old Indian herding ponies, and it
