Evening after evening the chiefs sat upon the grave portals of their children. At first they were greeted with loud cries, extorted by the gnawing of hunger and the agony of thirst. Gradually the cries gave way to low moans, and finally, after ten days had elapsed, the tomb became as silent as the lips of the lovers. Then the huge stones were, by the command of the two kings, rolled away, and a select body of warriors ordered to enter and bring forth their lifeless forms. But the west wind had sprung up, and just as the stones were taken from the entrance, a low, deep, sorrowful sigh issued from the mouth of the cave. Startled and terrified beyond control, the warriors retreated hastily from the spot; and the weird utterances continuing, no warriors could be found brave enough to sound the depths of that dreadful sepulchre. Day after day canoes crowded about the mouth of the cave, and still the west wind blew, and still the sighs and moans continued to strike the souls of the trembling warriors.
Finally, no canoe dared approach the spot. In paddling past they would always veer their canoes seaward, and hurry past with all the speed they could command.
Centuries passed away; the level of the lake had sunk many feet; the last scions of the O-kak-oni-tas and the Gra-sop-o-itas had mouldered many years in the burying-grounds of their sires, and a new race had usurped their old hunting grounds. Still no one had ever entered the haunted cave.
One day, late in the autumn of 1849, a company of emigrants on their way to California, were passing, toward evening, the month of the cavern, and hearing a strange, low, mournful sigh, seeming to issue thence, they landed their canoe and resolved to solve the mystery. Lighting some pitch-pine torches, they proceeded cautiously to explore the cavern. For a long time they could discern nothing. At length, in the furthest corner of the gloomy recess, they found two human skeletons, with their bony arms entwined, and their fleshless skulls resting upon each other's bosoms. The lovers are dead, but the old cave still echoes with their dying sobs.
II.—DICK BARTER'S YARN; OR, THE LAST OF THE MERMAIDS.
Well, Dick began, you see I am an old salt, having sailed the seas for more than forty-nine years, and being entirely unaccustomed to living upon the land. By some accident or other, I found myself, in the winter of 1849, cook for a party of miners who were sluicing high up the North Fork of the American. We had a hard time all winter, and when spring opened, it was agreed that I and a comrade named Liehard should cross the summit and spend a week fishing at the lake. We took along an old Washoe Indian, who spoke Spanish, as a guide. This old man had formerly lived on the north margin of the lake, near where Tahoe City is now situated, and was perfectly familiar with all the most noted fishing grounds and chief points of interest throughout its entire circuit.
We had hardly got started before he commenced telling us of a remarkable struggle, which he declared had been going on for many hundred years between a border tribe of Indians and the inhabitants of the lake, whom he designated as Water-men, or "hombres de las aguas." On asking if he really meant to say that human beings lived and breathed like fish in Lake Bigler, he declared without any hesitation that such was the fact; that he had often seen them; and went on to describe a terrific combat he witnessed a great many years ago, between a Pol-i-wog chief and a man of the water. On my expressing some doubt as to the veracity of the statement, he proffered to show us the very spot where it occurred; and at the same time expressed a belief that by manufacturing a whistle from the bark of the mountain chinquapin, and blowing it as the Pol-i-wogs did, we might entice some of their old enemies from the depths of the lake. My curiosity now being raised tip-toe, I proceeded to interrogate Juan more closely, and in answer I succeeded in obtaining the following curious particulars:
The tribe of border Indians called the Pol-i-wogs were a sort of amphibious race, and a hybrid between the Pi-Utes and the mermaids of the lake. They were of a much lighter color than their progenitors, and were distinguished by a great many peculiar characteristics. Exceedingly few in number, and quarrelsome in the extreme, they resented every intrusion upon the waters of the lake as a personal affront, and made perpetual war upon neighboring tribes. Hence, as Juan remarked, they soon became extinct after the invasion of the Washoes. The last of them disappeared about twenty-five years ago. The most noted of their peculiarities were the following:
First. Their heads were broad and extremely flat; the eyes protuberant, and the ears scarcely perceptible—being a small opening closed by a movable valve shaped like the scale of a salmon. Their mouths were very large, extending entirely across the cheeks, and bounded by a hard rim of bone, instead of the common lip. In appearance, therefore, the head did not look unlike an immense catfish head, except there were no fins about the jaws, and no feelers, as we call them.