COURSE OF TRAILS. 119 
poor old shoulders the game they have killed. He may be seen tottering 
feebly in behind them, meek and uncomplaining, even speaking proudly of 
their skill, while he is almost crushed to earth beneath a burden which their 
unencumbered strength is greatly more able to support, but they touch it 
not with so much as one of their fingers. 
Most people who have traveled in the frontier regions of California, 
especially if they were on foot, have probably been no little worried and 
exasperated at the perversity with which the road-makers have run the trails 
and roads over the summits of the hills. Often have I said to myself in 
my hot impatience, “If there is one hill in all this land that is higher than 
another, these engineers and graders are never content until they have car- 
ried the road over the top of it.” But the Indians are more responsible for 
this than our engineers. ‘Time and again I have wondered why the trails 
so laboriously climb over the highest part of the mountain; but I afterward 
discovered that the reason is because the Indians needed these elevated 
points as lookout-stations for observing the movements of their enemies. 
They run the original trails through the chaparral. The pioneers followed 
in their footsteps, and widened the path when need was, instead of going 
vigorously to work and cutting a new one on an easier grade; and in process 
of time when a wagon-road became necessary they often followed the line 
of the ancient trail. When the whole face of the country is wooded alike, 
the old Indian trails will be found along the streams; but when it is some- 
what open they invariably run along the ridges, a rod or two below the 
crest—on the south side of it, if the ridge trends east and west; on the 
east side, if it trends north and south. This is for the reason, as botanical 
readers will understand, that the west or north side of a hill is most thickly 
wooded. The California Indians seek open ground for their trails that they 
may not be surprised either by their enemies or by cougars and grizzly 
bears, of which beasts they entertain a lively terror. 
The Wailakki are a choleric, vicious, quarrelsome race, like the Yuki 
of Round Valley, whom they resemble; and these two tribes are the prime 
rascals of all that country. Naturally, therefore, the tribe has been rap- 
idly fretted away by the white men, and they would have been wholly 
