be easily enforced was, especially at the outset, by no means without responsibility. But as the period approached which for the first time in a quarter of a century was to witness a radical change of government, the Republican party became even more rabid in favor of egoism and reaction. The Democratic party became less so. The last measure which, prior to its relinquish ment of power, the Republican party made an energetic effort to carry was the Nicaragua treaty of 1884. Five weeks before the 4th of March, 1885, the vote occurred. As a body, the Republican Senators voted for the convention, the Democratic Senators against it. There were exceptions on both sides. If we compare the Republican party in its origin with the party when, as the limit of its ascendency approached, it sought to asperse and annul its former record, the contrast is humiliating. One word tells the story, -a falling from moral principle; a falling to the level of temporary expedients and the struggle for advantage. May we not hope that the brief return of the Democratic party to power has produced this good effect, an arrest of further recklessness and degradation?

It is not necessary to analyze the purposes of the Democratic party. We need not decide how far its course was due to motives of expediency or considerations of justice. It may perhaps be said that, having been shut out from power for a quarter of a century, it was ambitious, on resuming ascendency, to appear as the protagonist of doctrines which concerned the welfare of the whole world and possessed its sanction as well. Whatever the motive, this course the Democratic party took. It should have been taken by the Republican party, but that party refused.

As we have been obliged to criticise with severity the course of President Arthur, it is with satisfaction that we quote from one of his messages, that of

December 4, 1882. Referring to the correspondence, not then concluded, between Great Britain and the United States, he said, "It is likely that time will be more powerful than discussion in removing the divergence between the two nations, whose friendship is so closely cemented by the intimacy of their relations and the community of their interests." Precisely this occurred. Time did it. Nor was much time needed. President Cleveland, the successor of President Arthur, possessed one sterling Yankee quality, common sense. He knew what required to be done, and did it. Through his action Great Britain and the United States were brought into accord. At a breath he swept away the whole tissue of assumptions, the absurd pretenses, by which American control had been bolstered up. In place of an egoistic policy he established, or rather reëstablished, one by which all states should be entitled to equality of right. Once more it was declared that the Interoceanic Canal of America should be "forever open and free." Never should it become "a point of invitation for hostilities or a prize for warlike ambition." To the views of President Cleveland be added those of Mr. Bayard, his Secretary of State. Shortly before Mr. Bayard's retirement they were given to the public as follows:

may

"Another favorite theme with Mr. Bayard is the neutralization of certain localities which are useful to all the powers, and incapable of defense without disproportionate cost by any one. He instances the neutralization of the Suez Canal by the common consent of the European powers as an example of the important benefit to be secured by the application of this principle. Some similar arrangement would have to be entered into to protect the interests of this country, if a ship canal across the Isthmus of Panama is built. It would not be sufficient protection for the

United States to have control of such a canal. The only adequate protection is to be secured by neutralization of the canal by consent of all the powers."

This is the exact truth. Fuller security would thus be acquired than if we should pursue a course out of accord with the judgment of other states. American states, as well as European, would repudiate any such policy. Are we voluntarily to place ourselves in antagonism to civilization? Are we to assume the attitude of a state dissatisfied with progress? Shall we turn our backs on the very principles upon which our government is founded?

The mention of President Cleveland and Secretary Bayard ought not to mislead us as to the political significance of these doctrines: their advocacy can be ascribed in no exclusive sense to the Democratic party or Democratic leaders. The honor of believing in them and saying, "These are world-wide doctrines of justice; inevitably they are to prevail," is the property of no party. In all parties those able to take in the significance of progress, the necessities of international comity and right, are believers in and advocates of these principles. We have referred already to the testimonies, as emphatic as any ever uttered, of Sena

tor Hoar and William H. Seward. To their views may be added those of another illustrious American. Admiral Ammen was the intimate friend of General Grant. Widely known through his interest in the interoceanic question and his advocacy of the Nicaragua route, no authority stands higher in the judg ment of Americans. In his work upon The American Interoceanic Ship Canal Question he says, "Peoples have arrived at that intelligence that the government of a nation may in its relation to another rather seek to discover and promote common interests than hope to obtain and maintain mean advantages." In this admirable statement one of the best expressions of sentiment upon the subject- we are asked not to be upon the watch for "mean advantages; rather, to make the object of our endeavor benefits which shall be mutual and common, - benefits for all. Of a famous poem it has been said that it stood at the high-water mark of the poetry of the present century. It may be said in like manner of the statement of Admiral Ammen that it stands at the high-water mark of the moral declarations of the time. It is not possible that the United States is to depart from a policy so liberal and enlightened.

Stuart F. Weld.

WHEN the events occurred which I am about to narrate, I was ignorant of the superstitious veneration with which so many of the Northwestern Indians regard the symbol of the heart. A heartshaped leaf or pebble is never held in the hand if it can be avoided. The rude figure of a heart traced in red ochre on a rock or tree-stump commemorates some event of peculiar solemnity, and commands the respectful obeisance of

every Indian who sees it. The same form outlined with boulders, on the prairie or hillside, marks the scene of a great battle and victory or the death of some great chief. The area within the encircling stones is holy ground.

But, as I have said, I knew nothing of all this five years ago, when, in the first days of the Cœur d'Alene mining craze, I was working on my claim on Eagle Creek. Nor do I pretend to have

any explanation to offer of the incidents which I am about to chronicle. I have no "theory" to advance, and know no more of the chain which connected the incidents than the reader will know after he has read what follows.

I was working alone in my "drain ditch," shoveling laboriously at the coarse gravel, which was obstructed here and there by large boulders, lying immediately above the bed-rock and some two feet below the surface of the ground. It was hard and discouraging work, for as yet there had been no indication that the claim was likely to be "rich." The boulders had been more than ordinarily frequent and ponderous that day, and I was correspondingly weary, when suddenly my shovel turned up the Gold Heart.

"Turned up," I say; but, as a matter of fact, the Heart was dislodged from the side of the ditch, and slipped down with a handful of pebbles to my feet.

My first sensation was that of one who sees a miracle happen. It was certainly some seconds, and I think fully a minute, before I moved, before I could move, as the yellow mass lay glistening in the trickling water at my feet. Then, slowly and cautiously, I laid my shovel on the ground beside the ditch, and stealthily took off my hat, like a small boy about to pounce upon a butterfly. Dropping on my knees, I clapped my hat over the golden lump, clutching the brim with my hands on either side, and grinding my knuckles into the wet gravel. My heart beat fiercely and my breath came quick and hard, as after great physical exertion. I was trembling and terrified at I knew not what. There was no human being within two miles of where I was, and I knew it. But as I kneeled I glanced fearfully around and behind me into the misty woods. Moments passed before I dared to lift one edge of my hat to see if the beautiful thing still lay beneath. Even

when it lay uncovered and shining before me, it was long before I could bring myself to touch it or pick it up.

Experience in handling nuggets enabled me to guess shrewdly at the weight and value of any piece of rough gold. This, I estimated, was worth something more than six hundred dollars. But the precious metal as it comes out of the ground, new from nature's minting, has a beauty and a fascination which it loses on passing into the assay office; and this was incomparably the finest nugget that I had ever seen.

first in

I rubbed it

I weighed it in my hands, one, and then in the other. and polished it; held it out at arm'slength to look at it; laid it down, and drew off a few paces to admire it. Then I kissed it. Finally I turned my attention to the place whence it had been dislodged, and made another discovery.

Together with the lump of gold, my shovel had uncovered something else, which had also slipped to the bottom of the ditch and had lain unnoticed. It was a small bone. Looking at the side of the ditch where my shovel had last struck, I saw another bone sticking out from among the gravel. The loosening of the pebbles with my fingers brought others to light, until I quickly saw that I had lighted upon the skeleton of a human hand.

Before dark I had unearthed the entire arm, an unusually long one, it seemed, - and arrived at a rib. Next day the exhumation was completed, and there lay exposed the skeleton of an Indian, evidently, buried who knows how many years before? I had always understood that the Indians had never penetrated so far into the mountains. Eagle City, four miles distant, lay forty miles from the pass through which the Pend d'Oreilles on one side of the range and the Flatheads on the other used to exchange annual visits. Those forty miles were one stretch of dense forest, clothing steep hillsides; and the Indian

dislikes nothing so much as climbing hills. In those early days of Eagle City two or three red men were occasionally seen about the camp, as will hereafter appear; but they were Spokanes, who had followed in the train of the white man from Spokane Falls, a few months before, and were not indigenous to the mountains.

Nevertheless, the skeleton was sufficient evidence that one Indian, at least, had been there years before; and, moreover, somebody else had been there to bury him. The body was stretched at full length, parallel to the line of my ditch. The right arm was bent, the hand resting on the breast. The left arm had lain extended at right angles to the body, and it was on the fingers of this left hand that I had come so unexpectedly. The Gold Heart, I had no doubt, had been clasped in the dead man's hand when he was buried.

Still, I believed it to be a natural nugget, and not to have been fashioned by man into the form in which I found it. In one place a small crystal of quartz was imbedded in the gold, which would probably have been taken out in any moulding or carving process. Besides, the heart-shape as known to the Indian is more the shape of the human organ, and not at all the conventional symmetrically bi-lobed form which we see on valentines and playing-cards. But the Gold Heart was of precisely this conventional form, perfectly smooth save for the roughness of the one jagged point of quartz, and symmetrically rounded.

The evening of the day following my discovery, my partner, Alfred Trask, returned from a three days' trip to a claim on Trail Creek, twenty miles away, which he had some idea of purchasing. As my partner in the claim, he of course had a half-interest in the Gold Heart; and we sat late into the night looking at the nugget, caressing it in turn, and each endeavoring, though with poor success, to persuade the other that NO. 383. 20

VOL. LXIV.—

there was no connection between the gold and the Indian. If that were so, we might reasonably expect that the diggings which had produced such a nugget would turn out to be rich. But I doubt if either was much influenced by the arguments of the other, though all his sympathies were with the arguer. Before going to bed we decided to take the treasure into camp next day, and deposit it at the Pioneer bank. Before doing so, however, we had not a little work to finish about the claim, and it was after sundown and the bank was closed when we reached Eagle City.

For the entertainment of the homeless, Eagle City, in those early days, was provided with certain lodging-houses, large tents, which looked like hospital wards, with their row of small canvas cots on either side. We drew our two cots close together, that night, leaving only room for a hand to be thrust down between them, and immediately below this interstice we set the bag containing the Gold Heart. It was within arm'slength of both of us, therefore, and no one else could arrive at it without climbing over one or the other. The key of the bag was in the pocket of the clothes which I wore all night.

We awoke, apparently, almost simultaneously in the morning, and almost simultaneously we reached out to ascertain if the bag were still there. It was safe, and we at once proceeded to dress. Other occupants of the tent were soon astir in the dim, gray light, so it was with some circumspection that we drew the cots apart to reach the bag. I then stooped down, sitting on the edge of my cot, and unlocked the bag without lifting it from the ground. As soon as the jaws opened, Trask thrust his hand in, and I shall never forget the expression of utter blankness and bewilderment that came over his face.

The Gold Heart was gone! There was no doubt of it. The bag, when lifted, was lighter by some three pounds

than it had been the night before, and the nugget was certainly not there. There was nothing to be gained by making an uproar about it. If we had done so, we should have been likely to find ourselves involved in a quarrel with somebody, the lodging-house keeper or one of his rough tenants, which would probably not have been settled without the use of revolvers. We had no one to blame but ourselves, no one to suspect. There was no police in Eagle City then, and if the gold had been stolen we were more likely to catch the thief by saying nothing than if we raised a hue and cry in camp. So we said nothing. But although one or both of us stayed in camp for two weeks afterwards, not the smallest clue did we discover to lead us to the thief, if thief there had been.

It was in the middle of August that I found and lost the Gold Heart. It was late in September when Trask and a certain Charles Chapman and I started up Eagle Creek on a hunting trip, carrying our blankets, provisions, and cooking utensils on our backs. The second night, we camped at a place some thirty-five miles above our claim, - forty, perhaps, from Eagle City, where the gulch was wide enough to leave a hundred feet or so of level ground between the right bank of the stream and the steep pine-clad mountain-side. Before turning in for the night, Chapman and I made an excursion of a few hundred yards into the woods up stream, and there prepared a "salt lick" for deer. In the morning, at daybreak, we visited. the lick, but found no game nor any sign that the bait had been visited. We spent the day idling in camp, and catching a few of the small mountain trout with which the stream was meagrely supplied. At sundown we once more started out to visit the lick.

Among the mountains and under the shadow of the dense growth of pines and

tamaracks and cedars, it grows rapidly dark, and as we made our way cautiously through the brush the outlines of objects about us became more indistinct each moment. We were still some distance from the lick, when a rustling in the brush ahead made us both stop suddenly and look to our rifles. Again the leaves rustled, and the branches of a bush scarcely twenty paces from us shook visibly. Then I caught a glimpse of a dark body moving through the foli

age.

"Bear!" I whispered, straining my eyes to get such a sight as would justify a shot. Chapman, however, had apparently a better view than I, for he slowly raised his Winchester to his shoulder, while I was still craning my neck in vain endeavors to arrive at some idea of how the quarry stood. Once, after raising his rifle to his shoulder, Chapman lowered it, as if in uncertainty. Then he raised it again, aimed deliberately, and fired. There was a sudden swaying of branches, the crash of a heavy body falling, and, simultaneously, a cry which made our hearts stop beating. A moment later we were scrambling forward abreast as fast as we could move.