d their
knowledge of Human nature. While I was building castles in the air,
agents from Mexico privately came to Monterey and decided the matter.

They called together the Americans domiciled at Monterey, who were the
wealthiest and the most influential of the inhabitants, and asked them
what it was that they required from the government? Diminution of taxes,
answered they. It was agreed. What next? Reduction of duty on foreign
goods. Agreed again. And next? Some other privileges and dignities. All
these were granted.

In return for this liberality, the Mexican agents then demanded that two
or three of the lower Mexicans should be hung up for an example, and
that the Frenchman and his two white companions should be decoyed and
delivered up to the government.

This was consented to by these honest domiciliated Americans, and thus
did they arrange to sacrifice me who had done so much for them. Just as
everything had been arranged upon between them and the agents, I most
unfortunately made my appearance, with Gabriel and Roche, at the mission
at San Francisco. As soon as they heard of our arrival, we were
requested to honour them with our company at a public feast, in honour
of our success!! It was the meal of Judas. We were all three seized and
handed over to the Mexican agents. Bound hand and foot, under an escort
of thirty men, the next morning we set off to cross the deserts and
prairies of Sonora, to gain the Mexican capital, where we well knew that
a gibbet was to be our fate.

Such was the grateful return we received from those who had called us to
their assistance[17]. Such was my first lesson in civilized life!

[Footnote 17: Americans, or Europeans, who wish to reside in Mexico, are
obliged to conform to the Catholic religion, or they cannot hold
property and become resident merchants. These were the apostates for
wealth who betrayed me.]

CHAPTER XVIII.

As circumstances, which I have yet to relate, have prevented my return
to the Shoshones, and I shall have no more to say of their movements in
these pages, I would fain pay them a just tribute before I continue my
narrative. I wish the reader to perceive how much higher the Western
Indians are in the scale of humanity than the tribes of the East, so
well described be Cooper and other American writers. There is a
chivalrous spirit in these rangers of the western prairies not to be
exceeded in history or modern times.

The four tribes of Shoshone