I suppose a soldier in battle but rarely knows that he has actually shot a man.

But one of these old Indian fighters sits down after dinner, over a pipe, and relates to you, with quite horrifying coolness, every detail of the death which his rifle and his sure eye dealt to an Indian; and when this one, stroking meantime the head of a little boy who was standing at his knees, described to me how he lay on the grass and took aim at a tall chief who was, in the moonlight, trying to steal a boat from a party of gold-seekers, and how, at the crack of his rifle, the Indian fell his whole length in the boat and never stirred again, I confess I was dumb with amazement.

The tragedy had not even the dignity of an event in this man's life.

He shot Indians as he ate his dinner, plainly as a mere matter of course.

Nor was he a brute, but a kindly, honest, good fellow, not in the least blood-thirsty.
[Illustration: STREET IN OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON TERRITORY.] The poor Indians have rapidly melted away under the fervent heat of forty-rod whisky, rifles, and disease.