At the sound of the bugle the whole troop dashed into the valley, and the first sight that greeted them was a large group of wigwams. Before the savages could get into battle array their camp was surrounded, and a brisk carbine fire had opened on them. Almost at the first shot they lost heart, and on seeing them lay down their arms, the Captain stopped the firing and ordered his men to close in. John Savage, unable to control himself any longer, made a rush for the wigwams; and, while he looked desperately round him, his wife, screaming deliriously, came running to meet him. Through this prompt action on the part of the militia, the Indian rising was entirely suppressed, over a hundred braves were carried back to San Francisco as hostages, and the beautiful Yo-Semite Valley ceased, from that day, to be the stronghold of Shoshonee mountain-brigands. CHAPTER XVI AMONG THE NIQUIRANS AND APACHES A somewhat adventurous career fell to the lot of the late Julius Froebel, a nephew of the great Friedrich Froebel of "Kindergarten" fame. Having devoted his early manhood to journalism and politics of a very rabid and revolutionary character, he became the recognised leader of the Dresden democratic party in 1848. After being arrested in Austria and reprieved from a death-sentence, he fled to New York, and was for some time the editor of a German paper published there. Two years later he joined a party of traders who were sailing for Central America, and with these he stayed for some months at Granada, on Lake Nicaragua. Finding town life becoming tame to him, he one day started off by himself to examine the more inland district, which was then inhabited largely by Indian tribes. The project had been in his mind for a long time, and what finally decided him was the accidental meeting with a fellow countryman, who told him privately that gold had just been found in large quantities at a village a little farther west; so without a guide, without more than one day's provisions, and with only a very scanty knowledge of Spanish to help him on his way, he set off on his risky trip. He travelled all that day, and met no one after he had left the outskirts of the town; and that night, with his saddle for a pillow, he slept very comfortably under a tree. On the next day, he continued his way till an easy ride of about twelve miles, across a pathless plain, brought him suddenly on the heels of a travelling party of fifty Indians,--men, women, and children--all of them chatting freely and jubilantly, and riding as though bent upon some definite errand. They saluted him cheerily and he asked, in his broken Spanish, how far he was from the next village. "It is over there; not far; not very far." He looked where they were pointing and saw that smoke was rising thinly from beyond a clump of trees. "Keep with us, Señor, and we will show you the way," added the man, who seemed to be the chief or leader.