TACOMA AND THE INDIAN LEGEND OF HAMITCHOU 



while I brewed a pot of tea, blessing Confucius for that 

 restorative weed, as I had blessed Moses for his absti- 

 nence from porkers. 



Need I say that the grouse was admirable, that 

 everything was delicious, and the Confucian weed first 

 chop ? Even a scouse of mouldy biscuit met the ap- 

 proval of Loolowcan. Feasts cooked under the green- 

 wood tree, and eaten by their cooks after a triumphant 

 day of progress, are sweeter than the conventional 

 banquets of languid Christendom. After we had paid 

 our duty to the brisk fryer and the rotund roaster 



rouse, nothing remained but bones to propitiate 

 owee, should he find short commons in Elysium, and 

 wander back to his lodge, seeking what he might 

 devour. 



All along the journey I had been quietly probing 

 the nature of Loolowcan, my most intimate associate 

 thus far among the unalloyed copper-skins. Chinook 

 jargon was indeed but a blunt probe, yet perhaps deli- 

 cate enough to follow up such rough bits of conglom- 

 erate as served him for ideas. An inductive philos- 

 opher, tracing the laws of developing human thought 

 in corpore viti of a frowzy savage, finds his work simple, 

 the nuggets are on the surface. Those tough 

 pebbles known to some metaphysicians as innate 

 ideas, can be studied in Loolowcan in their process of 

 formation out of instincts. 



Number one is the prize number in Loolowcan's 

 lottery of life. He thinks of that number ; he dreams 

 of it alone. When he lies down to sleep, he plots 

 what he will do in the morning with his prize and his 

 possession ; when he wakes, he at once proceeds to 

 execute his plots. Loolowcan knows that there are 

 powers out of himself; rights out of himself he does 

 not comprehend, or even conceive. I have thus far 

 been very indulgent to him, and treated him republi- 

 canly, mindful of the heavy mesne profits for the occu- 

 pation of a continent, and the uncounted arrears of 



