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Equipped with individual taa-taas and quart cocoanut shells of hoopa, a delicious twenty-seven per cent. milk, we set out along a well-traveled trail, stopping ever and anon to enjoy the tranquil beauty of the outer sea or the more spectacular glimpses of the inner lagoon dominated by the mountain.
Hoopa! Mula! A splash, a spark struck from the ledge in the road, a clatter in the rocky cut beyond, and Dick was gone. Sing, O Muse, the ride of Richard Bullen! Sing, O Muse of chivalrous men! the sacred quest, the doughty deeds, the battery of low churls, the fearsome ride and grewsome perils of the Flower of Simpson's Bar! Alack! she is dainty, this Muse!
With hold-alls of panjandrus leaves packed with a supply of breadfruit sandwiches, sun-baked cuttywink eggs and a gallon or two of hoopa, we would go to one of the lovely retreats with which our wives were familiar. Occasionally we sailed in the Kawa, at which times the intrepid Triplett accompanied us.
My father was an inveterate trader, and the year after our coming he joined with another venturer in buying the standing crop of wheat in Hoopa Valley, on the Trinity River. I went up to help in the harvesting, being charged with the weighing of the sacked grain. It was a fine experience for an innocent Yankee boy.
With Triplett it was a case of forcible feeding for he kept trying to secrete his share of the menu in various parts of his person, slipping fistsful of crawfish in his shirt-bosom and pouring his cup of hoopa into an old fire-extinguisher which rolled in the ship's waist.
"We went in to the Hoopa Reservation," said Mr. Elastings, "and canoed down the Trinity and Klamath Rivers to the ocean. And just now we've come out from two weeks in the real wilds of Curry County." "You must go in," Hastings advised. "You'll get to Mountain Ranch to-night. And you can turn in from there. No roads, though. You'll have to pack your horses. But it's full of game.
The wheat we harvested was ground at the Hoopa mill and the flour was shipped to the Trinity and Klamath mines. All the week we harvested vigorously, and on Sunday we devoted most of the day to visiting the watermelon patches and sampling the product. Of course, we spent a portion of the day in washing our few clothes, usually swimming and splashing in the river until they were dry.
"Gentlemen," I said solemnly, "one final toast, to the President of the United States," at the same time draining a huge shell of hoopa. My companions followed suit and we fell simultaneously. For the next twenty-four hours we were safe. After that, who knew? A frank statement. We vote on the question of matrimony. A triple wedding. An epithalmic verse. We remember the "Kawa."
One day it would be a performance of the Ataboi, the languorously sensuous dance which we had first seen in the women's compound; again he would stage a scene of feasting, at which the men passed foaming shells of hoopa from hand to hand.
Hoopa Valley, on the Trinity, was purchased from its settlers and constituted a reservation protected by Fort Gaston and a garrison. It was my pleasure to revisit the scene of my boyhood experience and assist in the transfer largely conducted through the leadership of Austin Wiley, the editor and owner of the Humboldt Times.
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