AN OGRE—ISLES OF THE BLESSED. 153 
placed with the head pointing southward. Most of the Indians thus far men- 
tioned believe the Happy Land is in the west or southwest, but their notions 
are evidently confused. A young man who was born and bred among the 
Pomo told me that they nowadays burn only those killed or hanged by 
the whites, and bury the others. I know not if there is any special signifi- 
cance in their discrimination. . 
Robert White affirms that he has frequently seen an aged Indian or 
woman, living in hourly expectation of his demise, go dig his own burial- 
place, and then repair thither daily for months together, and eat his poor 
repast sitting in the mouth of his grave. The same strange, morbid idiosyn- 
crasy prevails among the Wintiin, in the Sacramento Valley. 
Before the irruption of the white men had reduced them to their present 
abject misery, the Kato Pomo treated their parents with a certain considera- 
tion, that is, they would always divide the last morsel of dried salmon with 
genuine savage thriftlessness; but as for any active, nurturing tenderness, 
it did not exist, or only véty seldom. They were only too glad to shufile 
off their shoulders the burden of their maintenance. On the other hand 
they gave their children unlimited free play. Men who have lived familiarly 
amidst them for years tell me they never yet have seen an Indian parent 
chastise his offspring, or correct them any otherwise than with berating words 
in a frenzy of passion, which also is extremely seldom. 
They have an absurd habit of hospitality, which reminds one of the 
Bedouin Arabs. Let a perfect stranger enter a wigwam and offer the lodge- 
father a string of beads for any object that takes his fancy—merely point- 
ing to it, but uttering no word—and the owner holds himself bound in savage 
honor to make the exchange, whether it is a fair one or not. The next day 
he may thrust the stranger through with his spear, or crush his forehead with 
a pebble from his sling, and the bystanders will look upon it as only the 
rectification of a bad bargain. 
It is wonderful how these Indians have all the forest and plain mapped 
out on the tablet of their memory. There is scarcely a bowlder, gulch, 
prominent tree, spring, knoll, glade, clump of bushes, cave, or bit of prairie 
within a radius of ten miles which is not perfectly familiar to the savage, 
even if it does not bear its own distinctive name. Yet he cannot give any 
