reat Spirit had given me what these poor creatures had not, and
that one day I would give California to them again. It has begun."

"But we have better things to eat and drink and more comfortable houses
and clothes than you have in your pueblos. I like what the priests call
'civilisation.'"

"It is for the white man, not for the Indian with a skin like the earth
and a heart like the wild-cat. If we did not know of fine bread and
thin wine and heavy shoes and cursed bags about our legs we should not
want them. Padre Flores says that he and the other priests came here to
make us happy. Why not let us be happy in our own way? We needed no
teaching."

Years after, Roldan, who grew to know the world well and many men,
recalled the conversation of that night, and meditated upon the strange
workings of the human mind: the fundamental philosophy of life differs
little in the brain of the savage and the brain of the student-thinker.

"We are told that we must progress, grow better," he said.

"Hundreds and hundreds of years Indians lived and died here before the
priests came. All legends say they were happy. Now they 'progress,' and
suffer--in the body and in the spirit. One life is for us, another for
you. Should the white man have many children and children's children
until all the mountains and valleys of California are his, then will
all the Indians die, even though they are treated well for they are
slaves--no more. Are they happy? For what were they made? To be slaves
and die from the earth before they are threescore and ten, to be no
more remembered than the beasts of the field?"

"I hope you'll win to-morrow," cried Roldan, his young mind moved to
pity, and profoundly disturbed. "You can never get California away from
the Spaniard, and I can't wish you to; but you might, if you rallied
all the Indians to you, become powerful enough to live in the way you
like best, and I hope you will. Why should men say: 'I am better than
you; I will make you like myself?' How do we know? I have ridden like
the wind, and coliared a bull with the best vaquero in the Californias,
but I am afraid my mind has had fifteen years of siesta. Now--well, I
shall be governor of the Californias one day, and then I shall send all
the Indians back to the mountains."

Anastacio put out his hand, and the two civilisations decreed by Nature
to stand apart from the beginning to the end of time clasped in brief
friendship.

"I will be your frien