Back I spur to meet the lagging train, toiling on, parched with thirst, blinded with dust; hungry, weary, and exhausted. I guide them to the valley, and at the sight of water, men and mules seem to gain new life, rush wildly towards it, plunge in, and drink as only the thirst-famished can. Unsaddle and let the mules feed for two hours, then light five fires, and keep them closely herded, although I have but very little dread of farther pursuit. Supped on grilled antelope, and got a few hours’ sleep. _May 23rd._—All safe; no sign of being followed. Off at dawn; fifteen miles more of this horrid waste, and we begin ascending a ridge of mountains, which I find is the watershed of the streams flowing into the Columbia on one side and into the Klamath river on the other; strike the headwaters of the Des Chutes or Fall river, and camp in a fine grassy prairie belted with pine—the _Pinus ponderosa_. Here I determine to remain two days, to allow resting-time for men and animals. _May 25th._—All wonderfully recruited; rest and good feeding soon repair a healthy body, be it man’s or quadruped’s. I stroll off with my gun, and observe that numbers of the pine-trees are completely studded with acorns, just as nails with large heads were driven into doors in olden days. I had seen a piece of the bark filled with acorns in San Francisco, and was there informed it was the work of a woodpecker, but, to tell the truth, thought I was being hoaxed; but here I am in the midst of dozens of trees, with acorns sticking out all over their trunks; it is no hoax, for I saw the birds that did it, and shot two of them. This singular acorn-storer is the Californian woodpecker (_Melanerpes formicivorus_), evidently of very social habits. They assemble in small flocks, climbing rapidly along the rough bark of the pitch-pine, rapping here and there, with their wedgelike beaks, to scare some drowsy insect; inducing it to rush out, to be nipped, or speared, with the barbed tongue, ere half-awake; others, sitting on the topmost branches of the oaks and pines, continually darted off after some fugitive moth or other winged insect, capturing it much in the fashion of the flycatchers. The harsh and discordant voice is made up for in beauty of plumage. A tuft of scarlet feathers crowns the head, and contrasts brilliantly with the glossy bottle-green of the back and neck; a white patch on the forehead joins, by a narrow isthmus of white, with a necklet of golden-yellow; the throat is dark-green, and the underparts of a pure white.