268 THE ACHOMAWI. 
often the same rapid, mumbling motion one may observe in the lips of a 
squirrel. Squatted on their haunches in their odious tatters, they grin, and 
erin, and lic. Nibbling at a piece of bony fish with those puckered, pre- 
hensile lips, they look like nothing in the world so much as a number of 
apes. Their faces are skinny, foreheads very low and retreating, bodies 
lank, and abdomens protuberant. I dismounted and stood fifteen minutes 
watching a group of them eating one of those execrable Pit River suckers ; 
and never in my life have I seen so saddening and so piteous a spectacle 
of the results which come from seizing out into bondage year after year all 
the comeliest maidens and bravest youths of a people. All the best young 
blood of the nation is filched out of it, and instead of physical advance- 
ment by the Darwinian principle of “selection”, here is steady embrute- 
ment by the propagation of the worst. 
But the tribe on the South Fork (whom I did not see) were perhaps 
made of better stuff, besides which they ate plenty of fat deer out of the 
mountains, and escaped the slave-raids of the Modok. It was these whose 
“nasty” fighting indirectly gave the name to Fort Damnation—a place well 
christened, where Crook jammed them at last against the wall. There is 
a deep, steep canon into which they had escaped as a last resort, and bar- 
ricading themselves with shards of rock and débris at the foot of the canon 
walls, they made it death for any man to show his face at its mouth. 
A subaltern officer came back to report the situation to his superior, 
and demurred against further fighting. To him said the grim soldier: “We 
were sent here to fight Indians. When you are all killed I am going in 
there to fight them myself.” Two detachments were sent out, and by 
making a long circuit they succeeded in reaching the brink of the canon 
on opposite sides. Then their bullets shot slanting down, and came ecrash- 
ing upon the heads of the savages, while plenty of leaden leg-cutters were 
slung up the cafion with an infernal yelling, and the Indians found it get- 
ting hot. It was their last fight. 
Let one remount at the Hot Spring and ride one easy day’s journey 
down to Big Valley where the mountains helped to keep out the thieving 
Modok slavers, and there is much improvement in the forms we meet. The 
faces are broad and black and calm, and shining with an Ethiopian 
