"Twenty Hill Hollow 



ground, each poised and settled daintily into 

 its place at a regular distance from^its fellows, 

 making a charming fairy-land of hills, with 

 small, grassy valleys between, each valley hav- 

 ing a tiny stream of its own, which leaps and 

 sparkles out into the open hollow, uniting to 

 form Hollow Creek. 



' Like all others in the immediate neighbor- 

 hood, these twenty hills are composed of strati- 

 fied lavas mixed with mountain drift in vary- 

 ing proportions. Some strata are almost wholly 

 made up of volcanic matter — lava and cinders 

 — thoroughly ground and mixed by the waters 

 that deposited them; others are largely com- 

 posed of slate and quartz boulders of all de- 

 grees of coarseness, forming conglomerates. A 

 few clear, open sections occur, exposing an 

 elaborate history of seas, and glaciers, and vol- 

 canic floods — chapters of cinders and ashes 

 that picture dark] days when these bright 

 snowy mountains were clouded in smoke and 

 rivered and laked with living fire. A fearful 

 age, say mortals, when these Sierras flowed 

 [ 195 ] 



