The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shadows of Shasta, by Joaquin Miller

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Title: Shadows of Shasta

Author: Joaquin Miller

Release Date: December 24, 2007 [EBook #24006]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SHADOWS OF SHASTA.

BY

JOAQUIN MILLER,

AUTHOR OF "SONGS OF THE SIERRAS,"
"THE DANITES IN THE SIERRAS," ETC.

CHICAGO:
JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY.
1881.

COPYRIGHT.

JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY.
A. D. 1881.

_All rights of Dramatization reserved to the Author._

TO

WHITELAW REID.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY 7

MOUNT SHASTA 17

TWENTY CARATS FINE 49

MAN-HUNTERS 81

THE OLD GOLD-HUNTER 108

THE CAPTURE 122

THE ESCAPE 150

SHADOWS OF SHASTA.

INTRODUCTORY.

_With vast foundations seamed and knit,
And wrought and bound by golden bars,
Sierra's peaks serenely sit
And challenge heaven's sentry-stars._

Why this book? Because last year, in the heart of the Sierras, I saw
women and children chained together and marched down from their cool,
healthy homes to degradation and death on the Reservation. At the side
of this long, chained line, urged on and kept in order by bayonets, rode
a young officer, splendid in gold and brass, and newly burnished, from
that now famous charity-school on the Hudson. These women and children
were guilty of no crime; they were not even accused of wrong. But their
fathers and brothers lay dead in battle-harness, on the mountain
heights and in the lava beds; and these few silent survivors, like
Israel of old, were being led into captivity--but, unlike the chosen
children, never to return to the beloved heart of their mountains.

Do you doubt these statements about the treatment of the Indians? Then
read this, from the man--the fiend in the form of man--who for years,
and until