the pompous native officials did not understand. I reached the office
one day to find the chief of police just arrived to collect for his
services in guarding the money brought out on pay-day.

"Ah, senor mio," cried the superintendent, "Y como esta usted? La
familia buena? Y los hijos--I'll slip the old geaser his six bones and
let him be on his way--Oh, si, senor. Como no? Con muchisimo gusto--and
there goes six of our good bucks and four bits and--Pues adios, muy
senor mio! Vaya bien!--If only you break your worthless old neck on the
way home--Adios pues!"

After the shower-bath it was as much worth while to stroll up over the
ridge back of the camp and watch the night settle down over this
upper-story world. Only on the coast of Cochinchina have I seen sunsets
to equal those in this altitude. Each one was different. To-night it
stretched entirely across the saw-toothed summits of the western hills
in a narrow, pinkish-red streak; to-morrow the play of colors on
mountains and clouds, shot blood-red, fading to saffron yellow, growing
an ever-thicker gray down to the horizon, with the unrivaled blue of the
sky overhead, all shifting and changing with every moment, would be
hopelessly beyond the power of words. Often rain was falling in a spot
or two far to the west, and there the clouds were jet black. In one
place well above the horizon was perhaps a brilliant pinkish patch of
reflected sun, and everything else an immensity of clouded sky running
from Confederate gray above to a blackish-blue that blended with range
upon range to the uttermost distance.

There was always a peculiar stillness over all the scene. Groups of
sandaled mine peons wound noiselessly away, a few rods apart, along
undulating trails, the red of their sarapes and the yellow of their