surroundings.
Standing by him was a shy Indian maiden with a dish of hot soup. His bed,
he discovered was in a burned-out cavity of one of the big trees. Near by
were several tepees, the tops of which emitted smoke. Straight,
black-haired Indians in bright blankets moved slowly from tent to tent.

Alfonso scarcely conscious had strange dreams. Sometimes he thought he
was in the Hodoo Region, or Goblin Land, the abode of evil spirits, where
he saw every kind of fantastic beast, bird, and reptile, and no end of
spectral shapes in the winding passages of a weird labyrinth on a far-off
island. Then his dreams were of rare beauty. Green foliage was changed to
pure white, the trees became laden with sparkling crystals, roadways and
streams were laid in shining silver, and geyser-craters enlarged in
strange forms resembled huge white thrones in gorgeous judgment halls.
Such fleeting beauty suggested to Alfonso's feverish brain the
supernatural, the abode perhaps of spirit beings. For days the medicine
man and Mariposa, daughter of the Indian chief, watched and cared for
Alfonso, whose life hovered over the grave.

Mariposa, Spanish for butterfly, was a fit name for the pretty Indian
maiden. She paid great deference not only to her tall father, Red Cloud,
but to the pale faces whenever in their presence. For four years
Mariposa, unusually bright, attended the Indian school at Carlisle, Pa.;
when she returned to her wild home in the forest she was able to speak
and read the language of the pale face, and beside she loved history and
poetry.

One day, Alfonso's health having slowly improved, Mariposa put in his
hands a small pine cone, the size of a hen's egg, and said, "Three years
go by from the budding to the ripening of the seed of the sequoias, or
big trees."

Alfonso did not know, till Mariposa told him that the big trees were
called sequoia in honor of a Cherokee chief, Sequoyah, who invented
letters for his people. She also told Alfonso that there were at least
ten groves of big trees on the northern slope of the Sierra Nevada range;
that some of the trees were thirty feet in diameter, and 325 feet in
height; that sixteen Yosemite braves on their ponies had taken refuge
from a terrible storm in the hollow of a single sequoia. Alfonso prized
highly a cane, fashioned by the Indian maiden from a fallen Big Tree. The
wood had a pale red tint, and was beautifully marked and polished.

Part of the Indian hunting party went