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 (Acheta 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 
