A word or two now about the Papagos.

The Papago country is large in extent,
but for the most part a complete desert.
It comprises all the country south of the
Rio Gila, which lies between the head of
the Gulf of California and that extensive
Cordillera of which the Sierra Catarina
forms the most westerly range, and extends
for some fifty to a hundred miles into
Sonora. All over this tract, wherever there
happens to be a stream, a spring, or a little
marsh amongst the barren rock hills which
thrust their peaks above the parched and
friable ground, or any spot favourably suited
for tank irrigation, there you are very likely
to find a little colony of Papagos, living
in huts similar in all respects to those
of the Pimas. I have been through their
desolate country, and visited many of their
villages, and I feel convinced that the hard
struggle they have ever had with nature to
support life in such a region, has done much
to develop the energy and manliness of
character peculiar to the tribe. As a race,
they are the finest specimens of man,
physically I have ever seen; on one occasion I
met five of them at a ranch, and not one of
the party measured less than six feet two
inches. If they were not so very dark in
complexion, their features would be pleasing,
for they have the steady, intelligent eye,
and straightforward manners of their more
northern brethren, the Pimas. The most
interesting point about them, however, is
their mode of life. Like the Jaqui Indians
of Southern Sonora, they very willingly
leave their homes at certain seasons to gain
a livelihood elsewhere. They own flocks
and herds in considerable quantities, and
they keep large droves of horses, or rather
ponies. It is probable that a number of
their villages, especially those supplied only
by artificial tanks, are uninhabitable, from
want of water, for a great part of the year,
so that they are obliged to migrate, to
support themselves and their stock during the
droughts; be that as it may, they have
become the greatest traders and the most
industrious people to be found in the
country. When the time for leaving their
little patches of cultivated ground around
the villages has arrived, some pack their
merchandise, consisting chiefly of baskets
and pottery similar to those made by the
Pimas, on their ponies, and go down to
Sonora to trade with the Mexicans, driving
their stock with them to pasture in the
comparatively fertile valleys to the
southward. Others travel immense distances
over the great Sonora Desert to the Gulf
of California, and particularly to some salt
lakes about a hundred miles west of Altar,
where they lay in a stock of salt and
seashells, and then return to trade with the
Indians on the Colorado, or the Pimas on
the Gila; or to sell the salt to the Mexicans
on the eastern side of their country. Others,
who have no merchandise to sell or ponies to
trade with, go to the settlements and ranches
from Tucson southward, and willingly hire
themselves out as field labourers or miners.
They work well for the Americans, and
receive usually a dollar a day, which is
certainly not bad wages. Then when the time
for planting conies round, they all return
again to their own homes in the desert.

The Pimas resisted sternly all attempts
made by the Jesuits or Franciscans to
convert them, and are now so diffident on
religious subjects, that they will not discuss
them, or give any information respecting
their belief; the Papagos, however, probably
from the close intercourse which they
have so long kept up with the Mexicans,
are, to all appearance, most devout Roman
Catholics. The cathedral of the tribe is
the last relic left of the Papago mission of
San Xaviere del Bac, and is situated on
the Rio de Santa Cruz.

Intercourse with the Mexicans has also
much modified their mode of dress, for the
men usually wear wide straw sombreros of
home manufacture, moccasins, buckskin
gaiters, a breech cloth of cotton, and a
snow-white cotton blanket thrown gracefully
across the chest. The women wear
petticoats, and neither sex seems to affect
ornaments or paint. The number of villages
scattered throughout the land of the
Papagos is about nineteen, and the population
of the entire tribe probably reaches
four thousand, of which three thousand live
north of the Mexican boundary line, and
perhaps one thousand south of it. So
effectively do the warriors protect their homes
that the Apaches never have the courage to
penetrate far into their country, although
they have quite depopulated the Mexican
settlements bordering it on the east.

           HECTOR BERLIOZ.

ONE of the most singular men who has ever
appeared in the world of music and of musical
literature has passed away, at the age of sixty-
six. This was Hector Berlioz. If he did not
even reach the allotted period of three score
years and ten, it may have been because his life
was somewhat prematurely consumed by
emotions, ambitions, and disappointments. They
were to be read in every line of a face never to
be forgotten by those who can read faces, in
every line which came from his pen. The story