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mountains, and the rocky slopes were pierced by a thousand tunnels. The summits of the wildest mountains were honeycombed in the eager search for other leads.

"When the geologists finally appeared upon the scene the strange fact was developed that these deposits of gravels were of river formation, and that they really represented fossil rivers, the grandfathers and great grandfathers of the present rivers, which in early tertiary times had been clogged with gold-bearing gravel and then filled to the brim with volcanic materials. Lindgren and Turner have studied these remnants of past river systems, and have determined the course, declivity and age of the streams, and the miners have, in several cases, followed the sinuous courses of the channels entirely through the ranges, washing out the gold and leaving the gravel still in the tunneled channels, as a woodworm pierces the oak, leaving only slight traces of his wonderful accomplishment did but what a remarkable succession of events this implies; what a vast time is involved and what an age is given to the races that pounded seeds or acorns and their mortars along the banks of those far-away ancestors of our modern rivers.

Work of Rivers.

The story they tell is about as follows: The tertiary rivers ran out across the high land pretty much as the streams of today find their way to the sea. They had strong currents, and scored down their slaty or granite walls and the gold-bearing quartz seams intersecting them, and filled their beds with the debris. The freed gold sank to the bottoms and the coarse water-worn materials accumulated to the thickness of hundreds of feet.

"It is upon the banks of these rivers that the race must have lived that left its bones and its tools and utensils imbedded along with the bodies of the giant mammals of their time then came the change over these scenes – a profound and wonderful change: a period of great volcanic activity followed, and lavas flowed in streams of mud descended, until the valleys were filled up and new channels, system after system, were formed. At the close of a vast period of these activities the deepest valleys were filled up to overflowing, and when the flows of basalt, the final products, ceased the waters of the Sierra had to begin a new the cutting of thoroughfares to the Pacific. This volcanic period continued through a large part of the tertiary age – a period not to be estimated in thousands, but in the hundreds of thousands of years.

"But behold the changes that have since taken place! These streams – the Marced, the Tuolumne, the Stanislas, the American river, the Yuba and others – have cut their way by the slow processes of erosion down deep into the bowels of the earth, now run their courses in valleys 2,000 feet deep and many miles in width, so profound, precipitous and inaccessible that it is a day's journey to cross them, where indeed they can be crossed at all by human feet.

"The traveler who descends into one of these great canons and painfully worked his way up the opposite side to the crests, where the miners are tunneling the riverbeds of former periods, finds himself soliloquizing in the following vein: 'Is it possible that man can have dwelt in this wild land so long as this, while these mountains were carved out and the vast valleys formed by the tedious sculpture of the mountain streams? It, indeed, surpasses belief, and unless the most weighty evidence is forthcoming, the whole story of auriferous gravel man must fall.'

"But this is not all the geologist has to tell the flight of time. When the valleys had been deepened nearly to their present beds the glacial period came on, and the ice reshaped them and modeled the marvelous contours of which Yosemite is a fine type. From the point of view of the man of the old river systems the glacial period is recent time, but this is the period of the paleolithic man of New Jersey and Ohio, if such there was, and the glacial man of Europe had not, even at this late date, reached the status of culture attained by his California precursor a million years before, if such a precursor there ever was.

Table Mountain.

"This panoramic sketch is not well calculated to give an idea of the magnitude of the geographical features which we have to deal, but it may serve to show something of the geological relations. Table mountain, A is a long narrow table land extending outward toward the west between two valleys from 1500 to 2000 feet deep. The summit of the mountain is sinuous as a serpent, for it is the is one that flowed into the bed of the ancient river whose gravely, gold-bearing bed is seen in the section at B. The streams cut their channels at the sides because the lava was harder than the neighboring formations, and what was originally the valley is now the mountain crest. The dotted lines in the section show how the tunnels pierce the sides of the mountain and reach the main channel of the old stream in the heart of the mountain, and it is from these deep diggings under Table mountain that many of the human relics are said to been brought forth. At C we have the undisturbed formations of the mountain. At B is Tuttletown where still lives 'Truthful James.' To the left is the profound Valley of the Stanislaus, and beyond this, and twenty miles away, at C, is Bald mountain, where, in a deep tunnel in formations corresponding to those of Table mountain, the Calaveras skull was found.

"Stranger than all are some of the facts encountered when we come to consider the physical characteristics and culture of auriferous gravel man. The human creature of a period so remote might be expected to betray some characteristics suggestive of his connection with the lower forms, for the race of mammals was then young, but the Calaveras skull, about which such a marvelous chapter in history has been instructed, belonged to a man quite equal to the average man of today in craniological development, and the evolutionist, if we accept the antiquity of the specimen, must receive a shock from this fact quite as stunning as does the ordinary descendent of Adam and Eve. Perhaps, as Bret Harte, planet, giving thee an air that is somewhat in addressing this skull forcibly suggests –

"'The professor slightly antedated by some thousand years thy advent on this better fitted for cold-blooded creatures.'

"Perhaps the most striking feature of this strange story of early tertiary humanity is that the traces of his activities, so plentifully brought to light, indicate not that he was struggling with the beginnings of the most elementary arts, as we might reasonably expect, but that he had reached the ripe state of culture known as neolithic, and ground his acorns and well-rounded and neatly decorated stone mortars, with symmetric, artistically shaped pestles, shaped fine obsidian blades for use in the chase, decorated his person with well-wrought beads and employed fancifully shaped stones of various kinds in his arts or ceremonies. Along with these things went, no doubt the appropriate accompaniments of advanced society, institutions and customs, and when we come to compare these varied objects with the tools and utensils of the tribes of men now living in California we are forcibly struck with the resemblances, and, indeed, in many cases with the absolute identity of the forms. This again caused the cautious investigator to pause and ask, 'Is it not possible that some mistake has been made and that auriferous gravel man is a myth?' But we turn to the evidence, to the writings of Whitney, Becker and others and to the statements of many miners and mining people, and are compelled to acknowledge its force.

The Affidavits.

"Mr. Thomas Matteson found the Calaveras skull in his shaft on Bald mountain at the depth of 125 feet, and the following affidavit is furnished by Professor Whitney, who took the trouble to visit the mine and secure it:

"SAN ANDREAS, Calaveras county, Cal., "January 3, 1874.

"This is to certify that I, the undersigned, did, about the year 1858, dig out of some mining claims known as the Stanislaus company, situated in Table mountain, Tuolumne county, opposite O'Byrn's Ferry, on the Stanislaus river, a stone hatchet, similar in shape to this (here is inscribed a rough drawing of a cutting implement of a triangular shape) with a hole through it for a handle, near the middle. Its size was four inches across the edge, and length about six inches. It had evidently been made by human hands. The above relic was found from sixty to seventy-five feet from the surface gravel, under the basalt and about 300 feet in from the mouth of the tunnel. There were also some stone mortars found at about the same time and place and at various times where there were also found numerous fossil bones of different animals, and fossil wood.

"(Signed JOHN CAROM.
"Subscribed and sworn to before me,
"WM. O. SWANSON, Justice of Peace,
"Calaveras county, Cal.

"And, again, there is the sworn statement of Mr. J. H. Neale of Sonora, given by Dr. Becker:

"SENORA, August 2 1890.

"In 1877 Mr. J. H. Neale was superintendent of the Montezuma Tunnel Company and ran the Montezuma tunnel into the gravel underlying the lava of Table mountain, Tuolumne county. The mouth of the tunnel is near the road which leads in a southerly direction from Rawhide camp, and about three miles from that place. The mouth is approximately 1,200 feet from the present edge of the solid lava cap of the mountain. the course of the tunnel is a little north of east.

"Half the distance of 1,400 and 1,500 feet from the mouth of the tunnel or of between 200 and 300 feet beyond the edge of the solid lava, Mr. Neale saw several spear heads, of some dark rock and nearly one foot in length. On exploring further, he himself found a small mortar three or four inches in diameter and of irregular shape. This was discovered within a foot or two of spear heads. He then found a large, well-formed pestle, now the property of Dr. R. L. Bromley, and near by a large and very irregular mortar, also at present the property of Dr. Bromley.

"All of these relics were found the same afternoon, and were within a few feet of one another and close to the bed rock, perhaps within one foot of it.

"Mr. Neale declares it utterly impossible that these relics can have reached the position in which they were found excepting at the time the gravel was deposited, and before the lava cap formed. There was not the slightest trace of any disturbance of the

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