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Show 250 WESTERN WILDS. There the scene is gay. The girls have on their brightest blankets ; each neck is encircled by numerous strands of beads, the number indicating the wearer's wealth ; the men are fancifully touched up with red and white paint, while even the withered old squaws have tricked out their worn bodies and weather- beaten visages in some remnants of faded finery. Groups are seen here and there gambling with Spanish cards; others are playing a peculiar aboriginal game like pitch and toss, while even the boys are shooting at a mark for wagers of loot-chsin. The men are tall and vigorous; the women finer looking than those of any other tribe, the younger ones often very handsome. Gar-nets, quartz crystals, flakes of mica, chips of aqua- marine, and a dozen kinds of glittering stones are displayed in quantities, and often worn as ornaments. Occasionally a slab of malachite is seen, and more rarely a turquoise ; for the whole region abounds in curious stones and petrifactions, with more fossils than Agassiz could classify in a month. All the hillocks made by the desert ants are found to be dotted with garnets, which, both plainsmen and Indians say, the insects have gath-ered from the adjacent plain and piled there evidently attracted by their brightness, whether from a sense of beauty or otherwise. Three hours before one would not have known there was an Indian in the vicinity ; now the square is full, and others are still pouring in. But all are doomed to disappointment. Congress has been too busy President- making to pass the appropriation bills, and the agent sadly says : " No provisions yet." It is a time of scarcity with them too. The annuity for the previous year has long been exhausted ; their crops for 1870 were very poor; in 1871 there was a total fail-ure. Their miserable, dry, burnt- out and barren country is yearly growing dryer and more barren; the bunch grass is abundant, as it grows without summer rains, but they have not had time to recruit their flocks since the devastating Navajo war, and starvation threatens half the tribe. The last grain in the agency store- house was issued on the 14th of June; the Indians have eaten all their oldest sheep and goats, saving the young, especially the ewes, to the last, and when I visit their hogans I sometimes see them gnawing away at what look suspiciously like equine shanks. The Agency employes have not been paid for a year, and have to buy their own provisions from the nearest Mexican settlements. Still the Navajoes are cheerful and lively, in their worst troubles still looking for better times ; and I spend many days of enjoyment rambling among them. My first task is to learn enough of the language for the usages of common life ; and a severe task it is. I begin with ah- tee- chee (" what |