“ A TRAMP witH REDSKINS.” 239 
disconsolate and still miserably weak from illness, on 
the high clay bank to watch them finally disappear. 
To be thus left for an indefinite time alone, with an 
arduous and uncertain task, for which one has little 
strength, before one, and to have to pretend to like all 
this, is, as I now remember it, as wretched acondition as 
one could wish for one’s worst enemy. 
But, whether it was the relief of having thrown off my 
black cares or whether from some other cause, from 
the moment I left that clay bank, to return across 
the savannah to the settlement where my hammock was 
slung, strength and pleasure in life seemed to come back 
to me and to my three companions. 
It may be well here to explain that these three com- 
panions were Redskins of the tribes inhabiting the sea 
coast, who had been for years, and are yet, in my service. 
One of these, GABRIEL, is not a pure Redman, but is of 
a red mother, belonging to one of the coast tribes, and a 
black father, the result of the cross, at any rate in his 
case, and of the fact that his whole life had been spent 
among redfolk, being a blending of great physical strength, 
derived from his father, with, and much improved by, the 
suppleness of limb, kindness, and pleasant habit of thought, 
of his maternal red-skinned ancestors. It should also be 
noted that the coast tribes, who have for centuries 
inhabited the unbroken tropical forest, and have there 
been brought into more or less close contaét with the 
white and black folk who inhabit those parts, are very 
different, in appearance and habit, and even in some 
small physical charaCters, from those other red-skinned 
ttibes who have for centuries inhabited the open moun- 
tainous country of the far interior, where they have til] 
HH 2 
