188 THE GUALALA. 
bread. To prepare them for consumption they first strip off the shells one 
by one, then place a large basket without a bottom on a broad, flat stone, 
pour into it the hulled acorns, and pound them up fine with long, slender, 
stone pestles. I had often noticed these bottomless baskets before, and 
wondered how the bottoms were worn out while the sides remained so good ; 
but here I learned that they were so made for a good reason. The flour 
thus obtained is bitter, puckery, and unfit to be eaten, but they now take it 
to the creek for the purpose of sweetening it. In the clean, white sand they 
scoop out capacious hollows, and with the palms of their hands pat them 
down smooth and tight. The acorn flour is poured in and covered with 
water. In the course of two or three hours the water percolates through 
the sand, carrying with it a portion of the bitterness ; and by repeating this 
process they render the flour perfectly sweet. The bread made from it is 
deliciously rich and oily, but they contrive somehow to make it as black as 
a pot, not only on the crust but throughout. Generally it is nothing but a 
kind of panada or mush, cooked with hot stones in baskets. 
In a time of scarcity they cut down the smaller trees in which the 
woodpeckers have stored away acorns, or climb up and pluck them out 
of the holes. 
And here I will make mention of a kind of sylvan barometer which 
Hopps told me he had learned from the Indians to observe. It is well known 
that a species of California woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus) drills holes 
in soft-wooded trees in autumn, into each of which the bird inserts an acorn, 
in order that when it gets full of worms in winter he may pull it out and 
devour the same. ‘These acorns are stowed away before the rainy season 
sets in, sometimes to the amount of a half-bushel in a tree, and when they 
are wetted they presently swell and start out a little. So always when a 
rain-storm is brewing, the woodpeckers fall to work with great industry a 
day or two in advance, and hammer them all in tight. During the winter, 
therefore, whenever the woods are heard rattling with the pecking of these 
busy little commissary clerks heading up their barrels of worms, the Indian 
knows a rain-storm is certain to follow. 
The Gualala also eat a considerable quantity of a wild potato, proba- 
bly cammas, which they call hi-po, and which-is said to be quite good 
