or months, until, weary of being
hemmed in, they chose to withdraw.

It consists of numerous redoubts formed by the unequal subsidence
of portions of the lava flow, and a complicated network of redans
abundantly supplied with salient and re-entering angles, being united
each to the other and to the redoubts by a labyrinth of open and covered
corridors, some of which expand at intervals into spacious caverns,
forming as a whole the most complete natural Gibraltar I ever saw. Other
castles scarcely less strong are connected with this by subterranean
passages known only to the Indians, while the unnatural blackness of the
rock out of which Nature has constructed these defenses, and the weird,
inhuman physiognomy of the whole region are well calculated to inspire
terror.

Deadly was the task of storming such a place. The breech-loading rifles
of the Indians thrust through chinks between the rocks were ready
to pick off every soldier who showed himself for a moment, while the
Indians lay utterly invisible. They were familiar with byways both over
and under ground, and could at any time sink suddenly out of sight like
squirrels among the loose boulders. Our bewildered soldiers heard them
shooting, now before, now behind them, as they glided from place
to place through fissures and subterranean passes, all the while as
invisible as Gyges wearing his magic ring. To judge from the few I
have seen, Modocs are not very amiable-looking people at best. When,
therefore, they were crawling stealthily in the gloomy caverns, unkempt
and begrimed and with the glare of war in their eyes, they must have
seemed very demons of the volcanic pit.

Captain Jack's cave is one of the many somber cells of the castle. It
measures twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter at the entrance, and
extends but a short distance in a horizontal direction. The floor is
littered with the bones of the animals slaughtered for food during the
war. Some eager archaeologist may hereafter discover this cabin and
startle his world by announcing another of the Stone Age caves. The
sun shines freely into its mouth, and graceful bunches of grass and
eriogonums and sage grow about it, doing what they can toward its
redemption from degrading associations and making it beautiful.

Where the lava meets the lake there are some fine curving bays,
beautifully embroidered with rushes and polygonums, a favorite resort of
waterfowl. On our return, keeping close along shore, we