MALLERY. | IN NEVADA. 93 
Fort Churchill. It is the largest and most important one of a group 
ef similar characters. It is basaltic, about 4 feet high and equally 
broad. 
Mr. Fulton gives the following description: 
The rock spoken of has an oblong hole about 2 inches by 4 and 16 inches deep at 
the left end, which has been chipped out before the lines were drawn, if it was not 
some form of the ancient mill which is so common, as it seems to be the starting 
point for the whole scheme of the artist. The rock lies with a broad, smooth top 
face at an angle towards the south, and its top and southeast side are covered with 
lines and marks that convey to the present generation no intelligence whatever, so 
far as I can learn. 
A line half an inch wide starts at the hole on the left and sweeping downward 
forms a sort of border forthe work untilitreaches midway of the rock, when it suddenly 
turns up and mingles with the hieroglyphics above. Two or three similar lines cross 
at the top of the stone, and one runs across and turns along the north side, losing 
itself in a coating of moss that seems as hard and dry and old as the stone itself. 
From the line at the bottom a few scallopy looking marks hang that may be a part 
of the picture, or it may be a fringe or ornament. The figures are not pictures of 
any animal, bird, or reptile, but seem to be made up of all known forms and are 
connected by wavy, snake-like lines. Something which might be taken for a dog 
with a round and characterless head at each end of the body, looking towards you, 
occupies a place near the lower line. The features are all plain enough. A deer’s 
head is joined to a patchwork that has something that might be taken for 4 legs 
beneath it. Bird’s claws show up in two or three places, but no bird is near them. 
Snaky figures run promiscuously through the whole thing. A circle at the right 
end has spokes joining at the center which run out and lose themselves in the maze 
outside. 
The best known and largest collection of marks that I know of covers a large 
smooth ledge at Hopkins Soda Springs, 12 miles south of the summit on the Central 
Pacific railroad. The rock is much the same in character as those I have described, 
but the groundwork in this case is a solid ledge 10 feet one way and perhaps 40 the 
other, all closely covered with rude characters, many of which seem to point to 
human figures, animals, reptiles, ete. The ledge lies at an angle of 45°, and 
must have been a tempting place for a lazy artist who chanced that way. 
Many other places on the Truckee river have such rocks all very much alike, and 
yet each bearing its own distinct features in the marking. Near a rock half a mile 
east of Verdi, a station on the Central Pacific railroad, 10 miles east of Reno, lie 
two others, the larger of which has lines originating in a hole at the upper right- 
hand corner, all running in tangents and angles, making a double-ended kind of an ~ 
arrangement of many-headed arrows, pointing three ways. A snail-like scroll lies 
between the two arms, but does not touch them. Below are blotches, as if the artist 
had tried his tools. 
This region has been roamed over by the Washoe Indians from a remote period, 
but none of them know anything of these works. One who has gray hair and more 
wrinkles than hairs, who is bent with age and who is said to be a hundred years 
old, was led to the spot. He said he saw them a heap long time ago, when he was 
only a few summers old, and they looked then just as they do now. 
Mr. Lovejoy, a well-known newspaper man, took up, in 1854, the ranche where 
the rocks lie, and said just before his death that they were in exactly the same con- 
dition when he first saw them as they are to-day. Others say the same, and they 
are certainly of a date prior to the settlement of this coast by Americans and proba- 
bly by the Spanish. 
They are very peculiar in many respects, and the rock is wonderfully adapted to 
the uses to which it has been put. Wherever the surface has been broken the color 
