join the rest at the Cheyenne Agency on the | center the orchestra sat, a crowd of men beating North Fork; to all of which the Osages Indian drums and playing upon rude whistles cheerfully assented. But with this woman's and "medicine gourds." Some four hun death the old savage fire blazed forth. The dred men and women, in their gayest apparel, ink was not yet dry upon the wonderful plumed and painted, joined in the dance. treaty, the body of the dead was yet warm, They sang fierce songs, telling how they when the young men came swarming about had conquered and mutilated their enemy. Ah Humkemi, asking him to waive the I give below a translation of one of these usual month's delay, and at once to organize songs, omitting the "Hi-i-i Ha-a-a," and the a war party for the purpose of killing the jargon of the refrain; omitting also the lonely Pawnee hunter. He reluctantly most emphatic phrases of threat and hatred. yielded, and furnished them with food, am- which are untranslatable on account of thei: munition, and all things needful. Seventy foulness: warriors, painted black, rode northward with the clear, cold dawn of the following morning. A hush of grim expectancy settled upon the camp. Wrapped in her gayest apparel, and decked with her choicest ornaments, the dead wife was buried under the salt sod. The dead baby, its eyes wistfully half open, its little forehead hideously daubed with vermilion, was laid on the frozen bosom of the mother. In gloomy silence, hardly speaking to each other, the mourners waited for the event to come.

"The Pawnee is a thief and a liar :
He eats dogs; he eats wolves;
He has a woman's heart:

He hides by day, and creeps at night like a snake:
He is the son of a dog; he was hatched from the
egg of a buzzard.

"He will not face his enemy like a warrior;
He comes to steal horses.

He seeks to murder and scalp babies.
May the wolves gnaw him!
May the buzzards eat him!

"The Pawnee came to our country;

His brothers were like him, full of lies,
We went to his hiding place,

We pierced him with bullets and arrows,
We scalped, beheaded, mutilated, disemboweled
him.

We will eat their hearts and drink their blood.
We will cut their tendons, burn and flay them;
We will burn their squaws and tents;
We will feed our dogs with their babies."

At sunset of the second day three reports of rifles were heard toward the north. Instantly the whole population swarmed out of the lodges, shouting, "They bring scalps!" The signal was one which they recognized. Fifteen minutes later, seventy black, yelling “If other Pawnees come to us, demons rode madly into camp. The leader bore a bloody scalp dangling from his spear. The victory had been an inglorious one, according to our standard. Seventy warriors had killed one lone, cowering hunter; but it was The above will suffice to express the lyric such an event as lets loose a legion of devils poetry of the noble red man, so far as one in the heart of the savage. The ghosts of may venture to express it to ears polite. the brutish, beetle-browed, anthropoid ances- The memory of that, as of many other tors ruled the hour. That night I caught a nights upon the plains, comes over me like glimpse of the life of the men of the Euro- a dream of some pre-existent life in hell. pean Stone Age. I knew what tigerish fires Of all our artists, Tavernier alone has once blazed out from under the hideous eye- caught some glimpse of that plane of being. brows of the giant of the Neanderthal Cave. The red firelight in the wintry forest; the While the victors feasted, the women made brandished tomahawks and the spears; the ready for the great festival of victory, the demoniac, painted faces; the bloody, new scalp dance. An oval track, some two hun- scalps dangling beside a hundred others. dred feet in its larger diameter, was cleared trophies of former victories; the unspeak of snow, leaves, and brush-wood. Two huge able gestures; the horrible yells and songs;— fires blazed at the foci of the ellipse. In the if Dante had stood that night beside me,

viewing all these, another, the most terri- | reached Kansas with their lives, bearing ble, page would have been added to the with them, I suppose, their copy of the Inferno. International Treaty. My only wonder was that such knaves and sons of knaves as the Pawnees were should have been for a moment deceived by it. The Pawnee ghost haunted the Osages, to their great annoyance, till it was laid, in due form, by their H. B. NORTON.

From that orgy a wave of blood-thirst rolled outward to all the outlying camps of the tribe. From village to village went out the order to kill all the Pawnees. The door of escape closed behind them. Escorted by a strong military guard, they barely sorcerer.

MOUNT HOOD.

O, white and silent!

Across hot spaces of the weary land
I look to thee!

A waiting, white-robed priest art thou to me.

Far from my feet

Stretch browning fields, where red-winged grasshoppers
Themselves repeat,

And spring unceasing in the withered grass;
The scattered trees,

All spell-bound with the heat, stir not a leaf;
No vagrant breeze

Relieves the sultry hush; but, reach on reach,
The hot air lies

Shimmering above the land, until afar,

Where 'gainst the skies

The sleeping hills lie lap on lap, it grows
A warm blue haze;

Then thou, Celestial Mount, above it all—
The summer blaze,

The panting land-dost rear thy calm, cool front.

A VISIT TO A KING.

Upper Guinea, generally and more loosely | silence his remonstrances, and held him a spoken of as the West Coast of Africa, con- prisoner for ransom. A squadron of British sists of a strip of country about one thousand men-of-war constantly patrolled the coast, miles long, and from one hundred and fifty with the double purpose of suppressing the to three hundred miles. wide, lying between slave-trade and protecting the English merthe Kong Mountains and the Atlantic, and chants; and the trader, as soon as he heard extending from Liberia to the Cameroons. of the outrage upon his subordinate, sent an The interior of this territory contains the application to the commodore for aid and powerful kingdoms of Ashantee, Dahomey, redress. With the promptitude characterisYoruba, and Benin; and numerous independ- tic of the British government in avenging ent or tributary tribes occupy the region near any injury to its subjects abroad, but few the shore The Ashantee war made us days elapsed before two frigates were anfamiliar with the peculiarities of that barbaric chored in the roadstead, and a gun-boat was realm, and the horrors of the kingdom of inside the river. A summary demand was Dahomey have been recited so often as to made for the release of the prisoner, and inhave passed into a proverb; but of the kings solently refused. The native towns are all of Benin and Yoruba, and their dominions, situated on shallow creeks inaccessible to very little is known. boats, and the river banks present an unbroken wall of mangrove-trees. So these people, who had never seen a war vessel, fancied they had only to retire to their dwellings to be out of reach of all harm. But the exact position of each village was well known to the traders, and one of them was promptly shelled and destroyed by the gunboat firing over the tops of the trees. This brought them to terms: the young man was surrendered the next day. The commodore then notified Jiurra, who, as the most powerful chief in the river, was held responsible for the good behavior of the rest, that a meeting of all the Jakri chiefs with the naval officers and traders would be held, to determine what reparation should be made. Cham Wanna himself was beyond the reach of punishment; but it was perfectly safe to inflict the penalty upon those within reach, relying upon them to pass it on, with interest, to the proper party.

More than twenty years ago I was engaged in mercantile pursuits at the various settlements along the west coast, chiefly in the rivers forming the delta of the Niger, bartering tobacco, rum, guns, powder, Manchester goods, etc., for palm-oil and ivory. During our stay in the Benin River an event occurred which gave me the opportunity to visit that mysterious potentate, the King of Benin. In the Benin River, which is a broad and stately stream, the navigation of which, however, is prevented by a shallow and dangerous bar at its mouth, were located at that time three forts or trading posts belonging to firms in Liverpool. One of the traders, hearing of a large quantity of oil in the possession of a chief named Cham Wanna, in order to forestall the other buyers, sent his clerk with a canoe load of goods to Cham Wanna's town, about twenty miles up the river, to negotiate for the purchase of the same. Cham Wanna was not disposed to make a hasty bargain, but evidently thinking it would be folly to neglect an opportunity so providentially thrown in his way, he seized the canoe and merchandise, flogged the young man, to

The meeting was held as announced; but an amusing incident that happened very early in the proceedings nearly deprived it of all its solemnity. The naval officers were assembled in the large business room of a

and a Jakri guide and interpreter. We ascended the river for several miles, and then branched off into one of the numerous creeks; and after pulling laboriously the whole day, we arrived after dark at Gato, a little town on the frontier of the kingdom of Benin.

trading post on an island in the river; marines paced the verandas, and the band from the flag-ship were grouped in front of the house, awaiting in silence the order to play. A fleet of war canoes approached, some of them containing over three hundred men; drawing alongside the little wharf, each We were hospitably received by the chief landed its owner and paddled off into mid- of Gato, who entertained us in his own stream. When the native dignitaries, in a va- house; and having refreshed us with supriegated diversity of costume, had all landed, per, he inquired the purpose of my visit. they moved in procession toward the house, Two men were then introduced, wearing headed by Jiurra, who, in virtue of his posi- immense steeple-crowned hats, and huge tion as head chief of the Jakris, wore a con- petticoats of brown cloth, which bulged out sul's uniform of blue and silver. All were as if they wore crinoline. They bore the barefoot, as shoes were fetich to them; and stick of the official, who is styled the "CapJiurra, to facilitate wading, had cut off the tain of War "; and it was explained that it legs of his official pantaloons at the knee. would be neither proper nor safe to proceed As he had omitted to hem the edges, the further into the dominions of his Majesty cloth had frayed into a fringe almost to his until these fellows had reported my arrival waist, making the otherwise prosaic uniform to their master, and obtained instructions as unutterably picturesque. Before they reached to my further advance. The legal fee for the house, the signal was passed to the band, this service was stated to be one cotton which immediately struck up a grand march, handkerchief-value, six cents-to each; so I beginning with a crash, a bang, and a roar. paid them, added a bottle of rum as an exA band had never been heard there before, tra gratuity, and hurried them off. As their and the chiefs, in mortal terror, flung their duty evidently was to watch the place, and dignity aside, and made frantic haste to jump report anything unusual, the exaction of a into the river and swim to their canoes, which fee from me was no doubt a swindle. promptly approached to the rescue; and it was a long time before they could be persuaded to trust themselves ashore again. Finally the matter was explained, more soothing airs were played, and the business of the day proceeded. A fine of a large quantity of oil was imposed upon them, and all trade forbidden for the space of three months.

Idleness in that climate is dangerous. Sickness and death wait closely upon it. The mail comes only once a month, and other means of recreation are few. I had long wished to know something of the city of Benin; so disregarding the advice of those who urged the danger of the journey, and the impossibility of relieving us if we fell into any danger, I loaded a canoe with presents for the king and his chiefs, and with sufficient cloth, rum, beads, and brass wire to pay necessary traveling expenses, and started. I took with me twenty Kroomen, well armed,

It is necessary to explain that for thirty miles or so above its mouth the banks of Benin River are vast mangrove swamps, completely covered at high tide. In these swamps live a tribe called the Jakris, in little towns built on artificial islands made by filling in the swamp with logs, brush, and sand. As these islands sink slowly but continuously into the mud, a new coating of logs and sand is necessary every two or three months. The houses are slightly built of bamboo, and are readily torn down and rebuilt. Each town has its own chief. The Jakris spend most of their time in their canoes, some of which are very large, and in the water; they provide nothing for their own subsistence except fish, but rely for their living solely upon the profits of trade with the interior. All trade with the white men goes through their hands, and the chiefs acquire considerable property in the way of wives, slaves, canoes, and arms. They have no domestic

animals, but a few fowls are kept in their | interest in the town was the grave of Belzohouses. They are fierce and savage when ni. This great explorer died of dysentery their anger is roused; but the keen desire to "turn an honest dollar" inclines them usually toward peace.