86 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



§ 58. Santa Ci^z Hulns. — Fifteen miles nortlieastward from 

 the town of Santa Cruz are "The Ruins," as they are called — 

 forty and odd perpendicular cylinders of sandstone, from a foot 

 to two feet in diameter, with holes from six to fourteen inches 

 wide running through them. These cylinders were discovered 

 in 1855, in a bed of sand, on the side of a sandstone mountain, 

 and were at first supposed to be the remains of some work of 

 human hands: whence their name of "The Ruins." Much 

 curiosity was excited by their discovery, and a number of men 

 were employed to dig away the sand, so as to expose the foun- 

 dation on which the cylinders stood. The excavation was car- 

 ried down in one place to the depth of forty feet, and the base 

 of the column was found to rest on the bed-rock sandstone. 

 The surface of the rock was sloping and rough, and there was 

 notliing to indicate the work of man. It is now supposed that 

 the cylinders were deposited by mineral springs, although it is 

 Ijelieved that no similar columns have been formed elsewhere, 

 the elevations made by mineral springs being, with this excep- 

 tion alone, shaped like hillocks or cones — never like cylinders. 

 The theory of deposition by springs may be the best mode of 

 explaining their existence, but it is not satisfactory : the cyl- 

 inders rise perjDendicularly, or nearly so, and are very little 

 thicker at the base than at the top ; some of them preserve the 

 same thickness from bottom to top. The material of the shafts 

 differs from that of the bed-rock by being coarser and darker. 

 And besides, the texture appears in places to have a spiral 

 form, as though it had been made of a thick paste, rolled up 

 spirally into a cylinder, and tlien hardened into a solid ; leav- 

 ing, however, a plain trace of the manner in which it was 

 made. And some pieces, which have been broken off, suggest 

 such a mode of formation. 



§ 59. Mirage, — Among the most remarkable scenes wit- 

 nessed in California are the illusions of the mirage in the des- 

 erts of the Colorado and the Great Basin. "All the phenomena 

 of mirage," says Professor W. P. Blake, " are exhibited on a 

 grand scale upon the Colorado Desert. Mountain-ranges, so 



