They
appeared like phantom horsemen, and our Indian guide told us they were
coming out to attack us, as there were "only a few and they are afoot."
A few had reached the bluff and had begun a scattering fire, when we
heard several shots that appeared to come directly from the stronghold.
The Indian guide told us he thought they were killing some Indians that
did not want to fight. As he had relatives among them the poor fellow
showed the distress he felt. A few minutes later we heard several more
shots, and I told Colonel Perry I heard Bernard's bugle. A few minutes
later the clear notes of the bugle rang out clear and distinct, though
it was fully five miles away. Yet in that clear, cold, dry atmosphere
every note sounded as clear and distinct as though but a mile away.
Bernard's column had followed the lake, and under cover of the fog
enveloping the shore, had approached much nearer than his orders
contemplated. He was at once savagely attacked and all evening the
rattle of the guns sounded like many bunches of fire crackers.
Repeatedly we heard him sound the charge and we all fretted that we
could not descend and join in the battle. Perry's men were desperately
afraid that "the Apache boys," as Bernard's men were called, would clean
out the Indians and leave them nothing to do on the morrow. But our
orders forbade and we contented ourselves with listening to the fight
from a distance without being able to take a hand. Toward night the fog
cleared away and we had an unobstructed view of the stronghold.

I have often been asked to describe the lava beds. That is beyond the
power of language. In a letter to the Army and Navy journal, written at
the suggestion of General Wheaton, I compared the Indians in the lava
beds to "ants in a sponge." In the language of another it is a "black
ocean tumbled into a thousand fantastic shapes, a wild chaos of ruin,
desolation, barrenness--a wilderness of billowy upheavals, of furious
whirlpools, of miniature mountains rent asunder, of gnarled and knotted,
wrinkled and twisted masses of blackness, and all these weird shapes,
all this turbulent panorama, all this far-stretching waste of blackness,
with its thrilling suggestiveness of life, of action, of boiling,
surging, furious motion was petrified--all stricken dead and cold in
the instant of its maddest rioting fettered, paralyzed and left to
glower at heaven in impotent rage for evermore."

Towards night the rattle of the guns grad