34 THE KAROK. 
‘Macbeth does murder sleep”. At the mention of his name the moulder- 
ing skeleton turns in his grave and groans. They do not like strangers 
even to inspect the burial-place ; and when I was leaning over the pickets, 
looking at one of them, an aged Indian approached and silently but urgently 
beckoned me to go away. 
They believe that the soul of a good Karok goes to the Happy Western 
Land beyond the great ocean. That they have a well-grounded assurance 
of an immortality beyond the grave is proven, if no otherwise, by their 
beautiful and poetical custom of whispering a message in the ear of the 
dead. Rosalino Camarena, husband to a Karok woman, and speaking the 
language well, relates the followimg incident illustrative of this custom: 
One of lis children died, and he had decently prepared it for burial, 
carried it in his own arms and laid it in its lonely grave on the steep mount- 
ain-side, amid the green and golden ferns, where the spiry pines mournfully 
soughed in the wind, chanting their sad threnody, while the swamp-stained 
Klamath roared over the rocks far, far below. He was about to cast the 
first shovelful of earth down upon it, when an Indian woman, a near rela- 
tive of the child, descended into the grave, bitterly weeping, knelt down 
beside the little one, and amid that shuddering and broken sobbing which 
only women know in their passionate sorrow, murmured in its ear: 
“(), darling, my dear one, good-bye! Nevermore shall your little hands 
softly clasp these old withered cheeks, and your pretty feet shall print the 
moist earth around my cabin nevermore, You are going on a long journey 
in the spirit-land, and you must go alone, for none of us can go with you. 
Listen, then, to the words which I speak to you and heed them well, for I 
speak the truth. In the spirit-land there are two roads. One of them is a path 
of roses, and it leads to the Happy Western Land beyond the great water, 
where you shall see your dear mother. The other is a path strewn with 
thorns and briers, and leads, I know not whither, to an evil and dark land, 
full of deadly serpents, where you would wander forever. O, dear child, 
choose you the path of roses, which leads to the Happy Western Land, a 
fair and sunny land, beautiful as the morning. And may the great Kareya 
help you to walk in it to the end, for your little tender feet must walk alone. 
O, darling, my dear one, good-bye!” 
