of us ain't killed!" This betting is confined to no class or race; it pervades society from its out-croppings on the surface down to the bed-rock. It appears to be inherent in the air. Juan, the native Californian or Mexican, bets his week's earnings in the mine on the color of the seeds of a watermelon which he bought for a dime, on the result of a break-neck race between two wild mustangs, ridden by two wilder vaqueros, on the issue of a cock-fight, or the turn of a card, loses, and is happy. John, from the Celestial Empire, bets his money, earned by the hardest kind of hard work, on the game of "Than," or "Tan," or on the Chinese game of dominoes. Jonathan, from "away down east," loses all regard for his early schooling, and bets his pile on anything, no matter how absurd.
The native Indians are as fond of betting as the native or imported Californian of Caucasian blood. Once upon a time I found myself on the bank of the Colorado River, among the stalwart Mojaves, the largest and finest race of Indians on the continent. An old sub-chief had traded with a gold hunter for a Spanish jackass, known as a buro in Spanish-American countries, and was riding him up and down the river-bank in great state, as full of new-born dignity as the King of all the Mosquitoes, when he mounts a new breech-clout, and is saluted as "His Royal Highness, the good friend and ally of Her Majesty, Victoria, by the grace of God," etc., etc. Unluckily, at the moment of his supreme happiness, a fellow Mojave dared him to play a game of the swindling crib-
