washed them off with cool water, then took a swim myself. I came back to the camp afoot. When I got near my lodge, I looked up the Little Horn towards Sitting Bull's camp. I saw a great dust rising. It looked like a whirlwind. Soon Sioux horseman came rushing into camp shouting: 'Soldiers come! Plenty white sol diers.' "I ran into "I got on my horse, and rode out into my camp. I called out to the people all running about: I am Two Moon, your chief. Don't run away. Stay here and fight. You must stay and fight the white soldiers. I shall stay even if I am to be killed.' "I rode swiftly toward Sitting Bull's camp. There I saw the white soldiers fighting in a line [Reno's men]. Indians COVered the flat. RAIN-IN-THE-FACE, A SIOUX WHO TOOK A PROMINENT PART IN THE my lodge, and said to my brother-inlaw, Get your horses; the white man is coming. for horses.' Everybody run "Outside, far up the valley, I heard a battle cry, Hay-ay, hay-ay! I heard shooting, too, this way [clapping his hands very fast]. I couldn't see any Indians. Everybody was getting horses and saddles. After I had caught my horse, a Sioux warrior came again and said, Many soldiers are coming. "Then he said to the women, Get out of the way, we are going to have hard fight.' "I said, All right, I am ready.' 6 They began to drive the soldiers all mixed up-Sioux, then soldiers, then more Sioux, and all shooting. The air was full of smoke and dust. I saw the soldiers fall back and drop into the river-bed like buffalo fleeing. They had no time to look for a crossing. The Sioux chased them up the hill, where they met more soldiers in wagons, and then messengers came saying more soldiers were going to kill the wo men, and the Sioux turned back. Chief Gall was there fighting, Crazy Horse also. "I then rode toward my camp, and stopped squaws from carrying off lodges. While I was sitting on my horse I saw flags come up over the hill to the east like that [he raised his finger-tips]. Then the soldiers rose all at once, all on horses, like this [he put his fingers behind each other to indicate that Custer appeared marching in columns of fours]. They formed into three bunches [squadrons] with a little ways between. Then a bugle sounded, and they all got off horses, and some soldiers led the horses back over the hill. "Then the Sioux rode up the ridge on all sides, riding very fast. The Cheyennes went up the left way. Then the shooting was quick, quick. Pop-pop-pop very fast. Some of the soldiers were down on their knees, some standing. Officers all in front. The smoke was like a great cloud, and everywhere the Sioux went the dust rose like smoke. We circled all round him-swirling like water round a stone. We shoot, we ride fast, we shoot again. Soldiers drop, and horses fall on them. Soldiers in line drop, but one man rides up and down the line- all the time shouting. He rode a sorrel horse with white face and white fore-legs. I don't know who he was. He was a brave man. "Indians keep swirling round and round, and the soldiers killed only a few. Many soldiers fell. At last all horses killed but five. Once in a while some man would break out and run toward the river, but he would fall. At last about a hundred men and five horsemen stood on the hill all bunched to gether. All along the bugler kept blowing his commands. He was very brave too. Then a chief was killed. I hear it was Long Hair [Custer], Idon't know; and then the five horsemen and the bunch of men, may be so forty, started toward the river. The man on the sorrel horse led them, shouting all the time.* He wore a buckskin shirt, and had long black hair and mustache. He fought hard with a big knife. His men were all covered with white dust. I couldn't tell whether they were officers or not. One man all alone ran far down toward the river, then round up over the hill. I thought he was going to escape, but a Sioux fired and hit him in the head. He was the last man. He wore braid on his arms [sergeant]. "All the soldiers were now killed, and the bodies were stripped. After that no one could tell which were officers. The bodies were left where they fell. We had no dance that night. We were sorrowful. "Next day four Sioux chiefs and two Cheyennes and I, Two Moon, went upon the battlefield to count the dead. One man carried a little bundle of sticks. When we came to dead men, we took a little stick and gave it to another man, so we counted the dead. There were 388. There were thirtynine Sioux and seven Cheyennes killed, and about a hundred wounded. *This man's identity is in dispute. He was apparently a scout. "Some white soldiers were cut with knives, to make sure they were dead; and the war women had mangled some. Most of them were left just where they fell. We came to the man with big mustache; he lay down the hills towards the river.* The Indians did not take his buckskin shirt. The Sioux said, 'That is a big chief. That is Long Hair.' I don't know. I had never seen him. The man on the white-faced horse was the bravest man. "That day as the sun was getting low our young men came up the Little Horn riding hard. Many white soldiers were coming in a big boat, and when we looked we could see the smoke rising. I called my people together, and we hurried up the Little Horn, into Rotten Grass Valley. We camped there three days, and then rode swiftly back over our old trail to the east. Sitting Bull went back into the Rosebud and down the Yellowstone, and away to the north. I did not see him again."† The old man paused and filled his pipe. His story was done. His mind came back to his poor people on the barren land where the rain seldom falls. "That was a long time ago. I am now old, and my mind has changed. I would rather see my people living in houses and singing and dancing. You have talked with me about fighting, and I have told you of the time long ago. All that is past. I think of these things now: First, that our reservation shall be fenced and the white settlers kept out and our young men kept in. Then there will be no trouble. Second, I want to see my people raising cattle and making butter. Last, I want to see my people going to school to learn the white man's way. That is all." There was something placid and powerful in the lines of the chief's broad brow, and his gestures were dramatic and noble in sweep. His extended arm, his musing eyes, his deep voice combined to express a meditative solemnity profoundly impressive. There was no anger in his voice, and no reminiscent ferocity. All that was strong and fine and distinctive in the Cheyenne character came out in the old man's talk. He seemed the leader and the thoughtful man he really is -patient under injustice, courteous even to his enemies. *Custer fell up higher on the ridge. From a photograph taken May 27, 1883, and published in the report of the Krakatoa committee of the Royal Society, 1888, entitled "The Eruption of Krakatoa and Subsequent Phenomena." IN WHEN MOUNTAINS BLOW THEIR HEADS OFF. MARVELOUS FACTS IN THE ACTION OF VOLCANOES.-SOME OBSERVATIONS BY PROF. JOHN MILNE. BY CLEVELAND MOFFETT. 1878, when Professor John Milne, then occupying the chair of geology and mining at the University of Tokio, was journeying over Japan describing its active volcanoes, he came to innocent old Bandaisan, about a hundred miles north of the capital, and for some time was in doubt whether to include her in his list or not. As far as he could learn, there was not a better behaved mountain than she in the whole empire; she never smoked, she never shook, and there were no traditions of her having been in eruption even at the most distant period. She simply rose out of her lonely valley, and went on, century after century, holding up the sky and troubling no one. She rose to the height of about a mile, and was calm. and grand. But peasants in the valley told of hot springs coming out from the base that brought poor people thither in numbers for their healing virtues, and when the Professor saw these springs he knew that he must look further, for where there is hot water there may be steam, and when steam gets into the bowels of a mountain many things may hap pen not provided for by the word "extinct." mixture of mud and stone, had poured down So he pressed up the mountain's sides, beau- the valley at the rate of forty-eight miles an tiful with verdure, and underneath the hour, and in twenty minutes had spread mosses and trailing vines he came upon itself to a depth of one hundred feet over a scoriaceous lava, which is another sign. region from twelve to fifteen miles long and Then he went right to the top, up the steep- from five to seven miles wide. When a river est slope, and found as fair a spread of vege- of mud travels down a valley at this rate, tation as the eye could rest upon; and pres- nearly a mile in a minute, a river as deep as ently two deer came bounding from the a church, it is needless to say that Death undergrowth as if to show him that there rides on the wave for a quick garnering. was no danger. Nevertheless, he found a That valley would have taken in the greater crater underneath, a genuine volcanic crater, part of New York City, which is long and and without more searching he classed Ban- narrow, and had New York City been there daisan among the active volcanoes of Japan. at this time, some two million mortals would Then see what Bandaisan did. On July have sent their last breaths bubbling up 15, 1888, ten years later, with no warning through mud. As it was, only 401 persons and for no reason that anyone can find out lost their lives, because only 401 persons who does not know the secrets under the were there to lose them. earth, she blew her beautiful green head off, and sent sixteen hundred million cubic yards of rock and earth that is Professor Sekya's estimate-to arrange themselves in the valley beneath as best they might. There is little use trying to think of sixteen hundred million cubic yards of rock and earth; it is better to do some figuring, and this shows: NW. SEA LEVEL OUTLINE OF THE CRATER OF KRAKATOA AS IT IS AT THE PRESENT TIME. The dotted line indicates the portions blown away in the paroxysmal outburst of August, 1883, and the changes in form of the flanks of the mountain by the fall of ejected material upon them. Reproduced from "The Eruption of Krakatoa and Subsequent Phenomena." (1) That if the mass blown away by Bandaisan at this time had been in nicely hewn fragments each the size of an ordinary street car, there would have been a train of these long enough to go five times around the earth. (2) That if these fragments had been blown into great shells as large as the largest ship afloat, with a displacement of, say, 15,000 tons each, they would, if floated end to end, have bridged the Pacific from San Francisco to Yokohama. Within three days of this startling justification of his conclusions as to Bandaisan, Professor Milne was at the scene of the disaster, and was the first person to make thorough and accurate observations of what had taken place. It is to him that I am indebted for the facts about this eruption, and also for photographs taken on the spot by his friend, Professor W. K. Burton. A FURIOUS RIVER OF MUD AND STONE. Now, this is what had happened. A river of" moya" or agglomerate, not lava, but a The same is true of houses and buildings: whatever was in the valley was destroyed; and for miles beyond, in all directions, villages were wrecked by the air-blast, trees were stripped bare as if forest by a fire, and crops standing in the fields were flattened on the ground like threads for a loom. Near Bandaisan is Lake Inawashiro, and from this point Professor Milne and his party, on the morning after their arrival, set out for the ruins. They started at daybreak, and explored until after dark, walking over a waste of steaming, slippery debris. They slid down banks of mud, not knowing what they should find at the bottom nor how they could get out again; they climbed over boulders like small cathedrals; they viewed the rebellious mountain from many points, and saw that its head was indeed missing, only a jagged neck showing here and there when the steam lifted. And they saw with amazement how the face of things was changed: everything bare and brown where carpets of green had been; houses gone, people gone, the valley buried in mud, and here, where dry land was, a new lake forming. This lake was caused by the sudden damming up of a mountain stream, and was destined to go on growing for two whole years, so that to-day it rivals Inawashira, and has actually caused the peasants in its vicinity to abandon farming and devote themselves to fishing. There was one phenomenon observed by |
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