170 THE YOKAIA, ETC. 
tagious frenzy of their race. One stripped off a broadcloth coat, quite new 
and fine, and ran frantically yelling and cast it upon the blazing pile. 
Another rushed up and was about to throw on a pair of California blankets, 
when a white man, to test his sincerity, offered him 516 for them, jingling 
the bright coins before his eyes; but the savage (for such he had become 
again for the moment), otherwise so avaricious, hurled him away with a 
yell of execration and ran and threw his offering into the flames. Squaws, 
even more frenzied, wildly flung upon the pyre all they had in the world— 
their dearest ornaments, their gaudiest dresses, their strings of glittering 
shells. Screaming, wailing, tearing their hair, beating their breasts in their 
mad and insensate infatuation, some of them would have cast themselves 
bodily into the flaming ruins and perished with the chief had they not been 
restrained by their companions. Thus the swift, bright flames with their 
hot tongues licked this ‘“‘cold obstruction” into chemice change, and the once 
“delighted spirit” of the savage was borne up— 
“To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, 
And blown with restless violence round about 
The pendent world”. 
It seems as if the savage shared in Shakspeare’s shudder at the thought 
of rotting in the dismal grave, for it is the one passion of his super- 
stition to think of the soul of his departed friend set free and purified by 
the swift, purging heat of the flames, not dragged down to be clogged and 
bound in the moldering body, but borne up in the soft, warm chariots of 
the smoke toward the beautiful sun, to bask in his warmth and light, and 
then to fly away to the Happy Western Land. What wonder if the Indian 
shrinks with unspeakable horror from the thought of burying his friend’s 
soul! of pressing and ramming down with pitiless clods that inner something 
which once took such delight in the sweet light of the sun! What wonder 
if it takes years to persuade him to do otherwise, and follow our custom ! 
What wonder if even then he does it with sad fears and misgivings! Why 
not let him keep his custom? In the gorgeous landscapes and balmy climate 
of California and India incremation is as natural to the savage as it is for 
him to love the beauty of the sun. Let the vile Esquimaux and the frozen 
