went on expeditions to other countries, they were as industrious as the Greeks and Romans, or, later, the French, English, and Spanish explorers, in carrying home whatever was worth stealing.

But many numbers of Young People might be filled with stories of what Mr. Du Chaillu saw, heard, and enjoyed. Every part of the country is described: the wonderful fiords, or bays, that were hollowed from lofty mountains by great glaciers; the castles and palaces that were built when Sweden was so rich and powerful that all Europe feared her; the feasts that last for days, and the Christmas fun that is kept up for a fortnight—are all described in the entertaining manner which has made the author so well known among boys. Instead of hurrying from one point to another, Mr. Du Chaillu travelled leisurely, and thus he saw and heard a great deal that will be new even to people who have visited Scandinavia, and imagine that they know all about it.

THE TALKING LEAVES.[1]

An Indian Story.

BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.

Chapter V.

ut to return to Ni-ha-be and Rita, whom we left sitting with Mother Dolores in Many Bears' lodge. It was a large round tent that they were sitting in, upheld by strong slender poles that came together at the top so as to leave a small opening. On the outside the covering was painted in bright colors, with a great many rude figures of men and animals. There was no furniture, but some buffalo and bear skins and some blankets were spread upon the ground, and it was a very comfortable lodge, for any weather that was likely to come in that region.

In such a bright day as that, all the light needed came through the open door, for the "flap" was still thrown back. The two girls, therefore, could see every change on the dark face of the great chief's Mexican squaw.

A good many changes came, for Dolores was very busily "remembering," and it was full five minutes before the thoughts brought to her by that picture of the "Way-side Shrine" began to fade away, so that she was again an Indian.

"Rita," whispered Ni-ha-be, "did it say anything to you?"

"Yes. A little. I saw something like it long ago. But I don't know what it means."

"Rita? Ni-ha-be?"

"What is it, Dolores?"

"Go. You will be in my way. I must cook supper for the chief. He is hungry. You must not go beyond the camp."

"What did the talking leaf say to you?" asked Ni-ha-be.

"Nothing. It is a great medicine leaf. I shall keep it. Perhaps it will say more to Rita by-and-by. Go."

The Apaches, like other Indians, know very little about cookery. They can roast meat and broil it, after a fashion, and they have several ways of cooking fish. They know how to boil when they are rich enough to have kettles, and they can make a miserable kind of corn-bread with Indian corn, dried or parched and pounded fine.

The one strong point in the character of Dolores, so far as the good opinion of old Many Bears went, was that she was the best cook in his band. She had not quite forgotten some things of that kind that she had learned before she became a squaw. Nobody else, therefore, was permitted to cook supper for the hungry chief. It was a source of many jealousies among his other squaws, but then he was almost always hungry, and none of them knew how to cook as she did.

She was proud of it too, and neither Ni-ha-be nor her adopted sister dreamed of disputing with her after she had uttered the word "supper."

They hurried out of the lodge, therefore, and Dolores was left alone.

She had no fire to kindle. That would be lighted in the open air by other female members of the family.

There were no pots and saucepans to be washed, although the one round, shallow, sheet-iron "fryer," such as soldiers sometimes use in camp, which she dragged from under a buffalo-skin in the corner, would have been none the worse for a little scrubbing.

She brought it out, and then she dropped it and sat down to take another look at that wonderful "talking leaf."

"What made me kneel down and shut my eyes? I could remember then. It is all gone now. It went away as soon as I got up again."

She folded the leaf carefully, and hid it in the folds of her deer-skin dress, but she was evidently a good deal puzzled.

"Maria Santisima—yes, I do remember that. It will all come back to me by-and-by. No! I don't want it to. It makes me afraid. I will cook supper, and forget all about it."

A Mexican woman of the lower class, unable to read, ignorant of almost everything but a little plain cookery, has less to forget than have most American children of six years old. But why should it frighten her, if the little she knew and had lost began to come back to her mind?

She did not stop to answer any such questions as that, but poured some pounded corn, a coarse uneven meal, into a battered tin pan. To this was added a little salt, some water was stirred in until a thick paste was made, and then the best cook of the Apaches was ready to carry her batter to the fire. Envious black eyes watched her while she heated her saucepan on the coals she raked out. Then she melted a carefully measured piece of buffalo tallow, and began to fry for her husband and master the cakes no other of his squaws could so well prepare.

When the cakes were done brown, the same fryer and a little water would serve to take the toughness out of some strips of dried venison before she broiled them, and the great chief would be the best-fed man in camp, until the hunters should return from the valley below with fresh game.

They were quite likely to do that before night, but Many Bears was a man who never waited long for something to eat after a hard day's march.

If Dolores had been a little alarmed at the prospect of being forced to "remember," a very different feeling had entered the mind of Rita when she and her sister came out of the lodge.

"What shall we do, Ni-ha-be?"

"Red Wolf told me he had something to say to me. There he is now. He beckons me to come. He does not want you."

"I am glad of it. There are trees and bushes down there beyond the corral. I will go and be alone."

"You will tell me all the talking leaves say to you?"

"Yes, but they will talk very slowly, I'm afraid."

Even the harsher sounds of the Apache tongue had a pleasant ring in the sweet, clear voices of the two girls, and the softer syllables, of which there were many, rippled after each other like water in a brook. It seemed, too, as if they said quite as much to each other by signs as by words. That is always so among people who live a great deal out-of-doors, or in narrow quarters, where other people can easily hear ordinary conversation.

The one peculiar thing about the signs used by the American Indians is that they mean so much and express it so clearly. Men of different tribes, not able to understand a word of each other's spoken tongue, will meet and talk together by the hour in "sign language," as intelligently as two well-trained deaf-mutes among the whites.

Perhaps one reason more for so much "sign-talking" is that there are so many tribes, each with a very rough tongue of its own, that is not easy for other tribes to pick up.

Red Wolf was again beckoning to Ni-ha-be, and there was an impatient look on his dark, self-willed face. It was time for her to make haste, therefore, and Rita put the three magazines under the light folds of her broad antelope-skin