After sitting down a couple of times in water two feet deep, I concluded to stay on shore and cast out into the pool.  Following this exhilarating exercise with indifferent success, I noticed approaching a little, old Indian.  He was bareheaded and barefooted.  His shirt was open, exposing his throat and breast.  His eyes were deep set, his hair and beard a grizzly gray.  He had a willow fishing pole in one hand and a short bush with green leaves on it, with which he was whacking grasshoppers, in the other.  He circled around on the bank near me, now and again catching a hopper.  I noticed that he ate about two out of every five that he caught.  The others he kept for bait.

Finally he approached the stream.  He paid no attention whatever to me.  He selected a spot almost under me, squatted down upon a flat rock, put two grasshoppers on his hook, threw it into the stream, and in a very short time drew out a good six-pound trout.  Filled with admiration for the feat, while he was tying a string through the fish’s gills I said to him, “Muy mahe,” which another Indian had told me meant “big trout.”  Without looking up or turning his head, he said to me in perfect English, “What sort of lingo are you giving me, young man?  The true pronunciation of those words is,” and then he repeated “Muy mahe,” with just a little twist to his words that I had not given them.  Resuming the conversation he remarked, “Why not speak English?  When both parties understand it, it is much more comfortable.  I intended to catch but one fish, but as you have admired this one, allow me to present it to you with my compliments.”  He had turned around now, and held out the struggling trout, a pleasant smile upon his worn features.

Embarrassed beyond measure, I apologized for attempting to talk to him in his own language, and accepted the trout.  He baited his hook, cast it into the stream, and in a short time landed a still larger trout.  Without removing it from the hook, he came up the bank to where I was seated.  He laid his fish and rod on the grass, wiped his forehead with his hand and sat down.

“I never catch more fish, or kill more game than I need for my present wants,” he remarked.  “That trout will be ample for my wife and myself for supper and breakfast, and in fact for all day tomorrow.  When he is gone, I will catch another one.”

Then, turning to me, he asked, “From what section of civilization do you hail?” I told him I was from Los Angeles.

“Ah, Los Angeles,” he murmured.  “The Queen City of the West and Angel City of the South.  I have read much of your beautiful city, and I have often thought I would like to visit it and confirm with my own eyes all I read about it.  What a paradise that country must have been for the Indian before you white men came!  I can hardly imagine a land of perpetual sunshine, a land where the flowers bloom constantly, where snows never fall.  Yes, I would like to go there, but I imagine I never shall.”  Then, with an inquiring glance, “What may be your calling?” he asked.