current, and at last makes the shore, to find a country which, like his
former life, is a mixture of good and bad. Some days are fair, and
others are rainy and chilly; flowers and brambles grow together; there
are some springs of water, but they are few, and not all cool and sweet;
the deer are few, and shy, and lean, and grizzly bears roam the hills
and valleys. This is the limbo of the moderately-wicked Digger.

The very bad Indian, placing his feet upon the attenuated bridge of
doom, makes a few steps forward, stumbles, falls into the whirling
waters below, and is swept downward with fearful velocity. At last, with
desperate struggles he half swims, and is half washed ashore on the same
side from which he started, to find a dreary land where the sun never
shines, and the cold rains always pour down from the dark skies, where
the water is brackish and foul, where no flowers ever bloom, where
leagues may be traversed without seeing a deer, and grizzly bears
abound. This is the hell of very bad Indians--and a very had one it is.

The worst Indians of all, at death, are transformed into grizzly bears.

The Digger has a good appetite, and he is not particular about his
eating. He likes grasshoppers, clover, acorns, roots, and fish. The
flesh of a dead mule, horse, cow, or hog, does not come amiss to him--I
mean the flesh of such as die natural deaths. He eats what he can get,
and all he can get. In the grasshopper season he is fat and flourishing.
In the suburbs of Sonora I came one day upon a lot of squaws, who were
engaged in catching grasshoppers. Stretched along in line, armed with
thick branches of pine, they threshed the ground in front of them as
they advanced, driving the grasshoppers before them in constantly
increasing numbers, until the air was thick with the flying insects.
Their course was directed to a deep gully, or gulch, into which they