were subject to were those produced by long involuntary fasting, violent exercise in pursuit of game, and over-eating.  Instinct more than reason had taught them a remedy for these ills.  It was the steam bath.  Something like a bake-oven was built, large enough to admit a man lying down.  Bushes were stuck in the ground in two rows, about six feet long and some two or three feet apart; other bushes connected the rows at one end.  The tops of the bushes were drawn together to interlace, and confined in that position; the whole was then plastered over with wet clay until every opening was filled.  Just inside the open end of the oven the floor was scooped out so as to make a hole that would hold a bucket or two of water.  These ovens were always built on the banks of a stream, a big spring, or pool of water.  When a patient required a bath, a fire was built near the oven and a pile of stones put upon it.  The cavity at the front was then filled with water.  When the stones were sufficiently heated, the patient would draw himself into the oven; a blanket would be thrown over the open end, and hot stones put into the water until the patient could stand it no longer.  He was then withdrawn from his steam bath and doused into the cold stream near by.  This treatment may have answered with the early ailments of the Indians.  With the measles or small-pox it would kill every time.

During my year on the Columbia River, the small-pox exterminated one small remnant of a band of Indians entirely, and reduced others materially.  I do not think there was a case of recovery among them, until the doctor with the Hudson Bay Company took the matter in hand and established a hospital.  Nearly every case he treated recovered.  I never, myself, saw the treatment described in the preceding paragraph, but have heard it described by persons who have witnessed it.  The decimation among the Indians I knew of personally, and the hospital, established for their benefit, was a Hudson’s Bay building not a stone’s throw from my own quarters.

The death of Colonel Bliss, of the Adjutant General’s department, which occurred July 5th, 1853, promoted me to the captaincy of a company then stationed at Humboldt Bay, California.  The notice reached me in September of the same year, and I very soon started to join my new command.  There was no way of reaching Humboldt at that time except to take passage on a San Francisco sailing vessel going after lumber.  Red wood, a species of cedar, which on the Pacific coast takes the place filled by white pine in the East, then abounded on the banks of Humboldt Bay.  There were extensive saw-mills engaged in preparing this lumber for the San Francisco market, and sailing vessels, used in getting it to market, furnished the only means of communication between Humboldt and the balance of the world.