After enduring all the hardships entailed by life in such a wild

country, they blundered into a gully where a brief analysis of the

detritus gave a result per ton which was not to be measured by ounces

but by pounds.

"Virgin! What a place that was!" exclaimed Suarez, his dark eyes

sparkling even yet with the recollection of it. "In one day we secured

more gold than we could carry. We threw away food to make room for it,

and then threw away gold to secure the food again. We called it the

Golden Valley. When weary of digging, we would spin coins to see who

drew corner lots in the town we had mapped out on a level piece of

land."

White men and Indians alike caught the fever. They accumulated a

useless hoard, having no means of transport other than their own backs,

and then, all precautions being relaxed, the nomad Indians, whom they

despised, rushed the camp when they were sleeping. They were nearly

all killed by stones shot from slings. Suarez was only stunned, and he

and a Spaniard, with two Indians, were reserved for future slaughter.

"The others were eaten," he said, "and their bones were used for making

fires. I saw my friend, Giacomo, felled like a bullock, and the

Indians as well. By chance, I was the last. I had no hope of escape.

I was too downcast even to make a fight of it, when, at the eleventh

hour, the mad idea seized me that I might please and astonish my

captors by performing a few sleight-of-hand tricks. I began by

throwing stones in the air, pretending to swallow them and causing them

to disappear otherwise, but finding them again in the heel of my boot

or hidden beneath any object which happened to be near. When the

Indians saw what I was doing, they gathered in a circle. I ate some

fire, and took a small toad out of a woman's ear. Dios! How they

gaped. They had never seen the like. All the tribe was summoned to

watch me."

Then the poor fellow began to cry.

"Holy Mother! Think of me playing the fool before those brutes! I

became their medicine man. I fought and killed my only rival, and,

since then, I have doctored a few of the chief men among them, so they

took me into the tribe, and always managed to procure me such food as I

could eat. They gave me roots and dried meat when they themselves were

living on putrid blubber, or worse, because they kill all the old women

as soon as famine threatens. The women are devoured long before the

dogs; dogs catch otters, but old women cannot. In winter, when a long

storm renders it impossible to obtain shell-fish, any woman who is

feeble will steal off and hide in the mountains. But the men track her

and bring her back. They hold her over the smoke of a fire until she

is choked. Ah! God in heaven! I have seen such sights during those

five years!"




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