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giantess, lately found by Dr. Cole in New Mexico, supposed to be of a woman seven feet high, which some say ante-dated the Toltec race, also those giant foot-prints found. in Orange County, Cal., made by a man at least twelve feet high?"

Evidently all my questions were not to be answered, for his Toltec Highness said:

"I leave that to your own judgment, and I think your good sense will find the correct answer."

"Do you know how the pyramids were built? As large of stature as you were, I cannot see how you could lift such weights."

"Those stones were not raised by muscle or skillful apparatus; they were raised by those who understood and could control the forces of terrestrial magnetism, so that the stone lost its weight and floated, guided by the touch of a finger."

"When Atlantis was swept away, or rather the Toltec portion of Atlantis, was that the first cataclysm the world ever knew?"

"No; Lemuria superceded Atlantis, and was destroyed by earthquakes and volcanoes some 700,000 years before the close of the Secondary age. The last remnant of Atlantis, called Poseidonis by Plato, was submerged 11,000 years Some 10,000,000 years ago,

ago. when

the world was in the Triassic period, of which so many fossils are found around Berkeley, I presume your race had about reached the zenith of her glory?"

"We cannot claim such antiquity. In the early age of the earth, convulsions and the breaking asunder of the ocean floors was happening very frequently. As I just told you, Lemuria was destroyed 700,000 years before the close of the Secondary age, having reached a high state of civilization. Atlantis followed next, and during the Eocene age she reached her highest spirituality; main part of Atlantis was destroyed by a great cataclysm about the middle of the Miocene age, some 4,000,000 years ago. Then came the Toltecs, which were destroyed 850,000 years ago during the Pliocene age. After the destruction of the fourth race, of which a chosen few escaped, the fifth race, the Aryans, were established in Central Asia, Asia, about 1,000,000 years ago, and with their history you doubtless are already familiar.'

"I have always longed to know what race of the old timers inhabited this central part of California, what they were doing when this grand old oak was dropped as an acorn: I'd love to picture

Was it all a dream?

INDIAN KATE

IN

BY HELEN A. MARTIN

N the interior of California in the time of this little history of one of its native daughters, only the necessaries of life were to be had, and a servant was as difflcult to obtain as any other luxury. We could make no choice, and Kate evidently knew it as well as I did, for when she first came it was with all her belongings, and the remark: "I come to work." There was no questioning upon either side of what would be expected or required. Wages were not mentioned then; I was delighted at the prospect of much-needed help, but my limited acquaintance with the Indians of Wahula Creek did not assure me that I would employ her for any length of time. There were only a few of these Indians left-a remnant of a once-powerful but peaceful tribe. They came into town occasionally from the Rancheria, about twenty miles distant, and a more disreputable bunch of humanity I had never seen before, for I was a new-comer, a tenderfoot. I had been told that Kate was different, and she was for a time. I was pleased to note that she seemed. thoroughly clean. Of course her skin was an ugly blackish brown, and her coal-black hair, coarse and heavy, and cut squaw fashion across the forehead. The mark of her tribe was on her chin, and was most disfiguring. When Kate was a small child, her mother died, and she was taken by a white woman, raised in a clean, decent manner, and taught plain cooking, washing and ironing. At the latter work. she excelled any and all, her clothes were snowy white, but it took her five days out of seven each week to

do this work for three adults and one child. But there was method in her slowness-she disliked cooking and liked the laundry work, so she made it last nearly the entire week. Indians were never known to be swift, ånd Kate was no exception. She was thoroughly clean about her work and person, and always dressed in light calico Mother Hubbards. No millionairess was ever more fond of Paris gowns than Kate was of her Mother Hubbards. All of her wages went for these and peppermint lozenges. The latter she devoured in quantities, the strong biting quality pleasing her taste immensely. She was always good-natured, and seemed to be content and very fond of all of us, and we found many good qualities in her. Any time of night she would prepare a supper for the man of the house, whose business made his dining very uncertain. No day was so burning hot but she would willingly go out in it to perform any errand or work for me, and she would perspire almost to melting to iron garments most beautifully, because I admired them. But all the time there was an undercurrent of longing and homesickness for her people and their food and for the mountains that she could not hide. She would stand like a statue, looking westward with her hands shading her eyes and sigh would follow sigh. "Over there-my home-my people," she would sometimes say, but would turn to her work and plod on apparently satisfied. "Wish I had acorn soup to-day," she often said, and as often told me how it was made. She could have known but little of rancher's life, for her

life had been with white people, so her homesickness and longing must have been innate. Apparently she took great interest in all of us. When the man of the house was away on long trips, she would watch for him, and when it grew late and he came not, she would go out into the road and lie down with her ear to the ground, and listen for the horse's hoof beats. Sometimes she would say, "He not come," and seemed worried. Again she would say, "He come soon," and begin to prepare supper for him. For me she had much admiration, and my fair skin and my hair were always a wonder and delight to her. Once she touched my arm, and said "Jes' like a lily; elil be dat faau to if elil jes' wear my bonnet," and laughed merrily at the idea. For the Little Man she always had time for kindly ways and words. Her slowness was exasperating at times, but her good qualities overbalanced. The months. had gone until six had passed, and the Mother Hubbards had multiplied and a cheap hat or two had been added to her wardrobe, and she was now doing the laundry in four days instead of five, and all seemed peaceful and prosperous. She had looked toward her home. and her people and sighed until I thought it a part of her daily devotion as the Buddhist, wherever he be, turns his face toward Buddha when he prays. But back of her apparent contentment there was genuine home-sickness, and she told me that she must now go to the Rancherie for a visit. I tried to persuade her not to go, but felt that she could not stand their filth and squalor, and that she would soon return to me. So she went to the mountains, to her people and her beloved acorn soup. I was both surprised and disappointed when she did not return as I expected, and hoped that she would. Time flew by

she

as it always does, and in the following fall the town was decorated (?) with posters and bills announcing the coming of a circus. This was as much of an event in that country in those days as a Worlds' Fair is now to the city in which it is held, only it does not last as long. For days before the great event the population of the country for miles would arrive, some camping out on the outskirts of the town and some doing the swell act of going to the hotel, while while others visited their friends.

An

On the day before the circus, Wahula Indians arrived and prepared a camp a short distance from my home. I was in great need of Kate, with all her slowness, and I went to their camping place to ask for her, never thinking that she would tell me of herself. I cannot describe my surprise when I found that the fat, waddling, dirty squaw that came toward me was Kate. old, dirty dress, short, narrow and faded, had taken the place of her clean Mother Hubbard. An old, faded blue apron and a red bandanna handkerchief upon her head completed her costume, with a pair of worn carpet slippers upon her feet. I tried not to show surprise and disgust, and asked her about herself. herself. "She married," "She married," she announced; "married my uncle." Again I stifled surprise, and asked where her good clothes were. "I loss 'em all," she said; "gambleloss 'em all." She turned from me without showing any feeling of shame or regret, or anything, but had seemed a bit toppy about her marriage. In her matrimonial bliss she had evidently lost her love for Mother Hubbards and peppermint lozenges. I looked back after a few steps and she was squatted down in the dust and fox-tail grass, the typical squaw. Truly, "Once an Indian, always an Indian."

WAITING FOR

THE RAIN

TH

BY WILL G. TAFFINDER

HE rainy season in this part of Mexico (the Bajio) commences in the middle of June. From January on the temperature grows warmer and the skies bluer. After the few days of rain which usually comes in January or February, the clouds grow fewer and fewer, until in April the sun rises and sets week in and out, in a sky absolutely cloudless and blue as the "bloom of the fairy flax." In May the noon-tide heat becomes oppressive, although the nights and mornings are cool. Vegetation dies and the face of the country becomes a study in brown, that peculiar, thirsty, dusty, dun color which tells so plainly of drought.

The mesquite trees and the cactus alone retain sufficient life to remain green.

In the hot noon-day the mountains shimmer in the distance, a multi-colored, sharp-set silhouette against the blue sky beyond.

All through the day the sunlight makes an ever-changing panorama of lights and shades, and plays an everlasting symphony, grand in its various tones of color a-down the sides of old "Giganti."

The peons move lazily in the heat. The oxen toil slowly at the plow, with heads hanging low. The very hum of insect life, so marked in Mexico, seemed stilled at noon-tide.

June has arrived. A slight mist begins to gather on the mountain slopes, which lose their sharp outline. A little cloud or two floats in the sky, white and fleecy as a snowflake.

The winds commence to blow in the afternoons, and the air becomes dryer and more oppressive. The

rancheros now seem to awaken again to work deepening ditches, finishing plowing, mending roofs, and getting everything in trim, for with the rains comes the seed time.

Since the last rainy season ended in September, nothing has been done; roofs have become leaky, arroyos choked with debris, adobe walls weakened by the last season's rains, have fallen, and now it is necessary to work, for when it rains here it rains, and no work can be done, except between whiles.

Mexican-like, everything that can be left undone has remained in that quiescent state until now, and only ten days remain of the "dry season." In eighteen years the rains have commenced but three years in May, and of the other fifteen years a great percentage makes it a safe calculation that it will rain between the 10th and 15th of June; hence now the necessity of prompt action.

The clouds gather and roll up before the wind, no longer soft and fleecy, but huge, black, ugly masses, twisting and turning as if lashed to fury by the winds of the gathering storm. The hills and mountains for hours at a time are lost to view, or appear as shadows seen through the leaden gray mist.

Myriads of beautiful insects spring into life, and invade the houses-gorgeous moths in all colors and sizes, from the death's-head, 6 inches from tip to tip of wing, down to the common "miller." Gaudy bugs that flash in the sunlight like an emerald, and butterflies with rain-bow colored wings that live but for a day.

The birds, which a few days ago made music in the trees, are gone,

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