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 hollow 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 comfortless 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 important article of their diet. They seldom fish or hunt. Their arms are bows and arrows; their clothing, both male and female, simply a bit of skin worn like an apron; they are small in stature; thin, squalid, dirty, and degraded in appearance. In their habits little better than an ourang-outang, they are certainly the lowest type of savage I have ever seen. We camped in the evening on a large plain called Big Flat. _May 10th._—It was bitterly cold all night, and froze sharply. We got off soon after sun-up, and literally crept along the side of a high range of mountains, densely wooded, and forming one side of the valley of the Sacramento, which has dwindled down into a mere mountain-burn. Here I came suddenly on a little colony of miners, engaged in gold-washing. I discovered the place was named Dogtown—the entire town consisting of a store, a grogshop, and a smithy. I paid twenty-five cents (a shilling) for a mere sip of the vilest poison I ever tasted, libellously called ‘Fine Old Monongahela Whisky.’ About six miles farther, still on the same trail, I came to another gold-claim, where there were no houses at all, called Portuguese Flat. Passed through some thin timber; camped on a lovely mountain-stream.