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
fell exhausted. It was astonishing to see with what dexterity the squaws
would gather them up and thrust them into a sort of covered basket; made
of willow-twigs or tule-grass, while the insects would be trying to
escape; but would fall back unable to rise above the sides of the gulch
in which they had been entrapped. The grasshoppers are dried, or cured,
for winter use. A white man who had tried them told me they were
pleasant eating, having a flavor very similar to that of a good shrimp.
(I was content to take his word for it.)

When Bishop Soule was in California, in 1853, he paid a visit to a
Digger campoody (or village) in the Calaveras hills. He was profoundly
interested, and expressed an ardent desire to be instrumental in the
conversion of one of these poor kin. It was yet early in the morning
when the Bishop and his party arrived, and the Diggers were not astir,
save here and there a squaw, in primitive array, who slouched lazily