248 MULE- HUNTING EXPEDITION. 



below rolled the river. The least mistake a 

 single false step, and over goes mule or man, 

 as it may be, and you see the last of him. 



Here I passed a most curious place called the 

 Devil's Pocket; the trail winds along the very 

 edge, and you peer down into an immense hol- 

 low kind of basin, that looks as if it had once been 

 a lake, and suddenly dried up. The hills are 

 lofty, sharply pointed, and capped with snow. 



At the head of this gorge I, for the first time, 

 saw an encampment of Digger Indians, and a 

 more famished picture of squalid misery can 

 hardly be imagined. Their wretched comfort- 

 less huts are like large molehills; there is a pit 

 sunk in the ground, and a framework of sticks, 

 shaped like a large umbrella arched, over it ; old 

 skins and pieces of bark are thrown over this 

 frame, and the whole is covered with earth. The 

 entrance is a hole, into which they creep like 

 animals. 



Their food consists principally of esculent roots 

 of various kinds, which they dig during the 

 summer months, and dry in the sun. The field- 

 cricket (A.cheta nigra) they also dry in large 

 quantities, and eat them just as we do shrimps. 

 Bread made from acorn-flour is also another im- 

 portant article of their diet. They seldom fish 



