THE ANCIENT MAN OF CALAVERAS. 455 



In what are called the " early days " in '49 and '50, the southern mines were 

 especially noted and productive. Don Pedro's bar and Hawkin's bar on the 

 Tuolumne were crowded with miners, and all the region about Sonora, and Co- 

 lumbia, and Shaw's flat, was swarming like a hive. The gold which was obtain- 

 ed had been brought down in company with the gravel from the mountain heights 

 far above, by the rush of water, ages before. Wherever an old channel could be 

 found in which the flow of water had been confined to narrow limits and to 

 whirling eddies, there the gold had been deposited more abundantly, and rich 

 strikes were made. While exploring these surface deposits, an old river-bed was 

 struck at Shaw's flat, in 1854, which showed features quite distinct from the 

 "diggings" adjacent, and in following out this discovery it became manifest that' 

 Table Mountain, as already stated, was simply a mass of lava filling an ancient 

 torrent canon, and that the gravel thus buried was in various places most wonder- 

 fully rich. This was the beginning of Table Mountain mining. 



The whole matter had very much the character of a lottery, for the expense 

 of running a tunnel under the mountain was very great, and the result entirely 

 uncertain, commonly rich to even a fabulous degree, or on the contrary a total 

 failure. The failures were many and the losses destructive to the fortunes of the 

 men interested, but the wild excitement of golden possibilities lured multitudes 

 along, and for years and years in succession Table Mountain was bored and tun- 

 neled most completely. It is not for us now to speak of the triumph or the 

 heart-ache which went with the work ; we know well that 



" No minstrel ever sung or told 

 A song so sweet as chink of gold," 



and nowhere, even in that land of enchantment, was the wild and fatal fascina- 

 tion of the search more fully felt than at Table Mountain. But that goes by us. 

 Out of these tunnels came the tokens of the past, and we see shadowy visions of 

 the ancient man looming up. 



But we will first try to measure off the intervals since the Table Mountain 

 lava flowed ; not that we can specify it in figures, but we may learn enough to 

 reverence its extent. We will consider but one feature. This is the magnitude 

 of the work which has been done by streams of water since the period of volcanic 

 eruption of which mention has been made. 



The western slope of the Sierra Nevada is furrowed with enormous gorges 

 reaching from the summit ridges to the plains of the Sacremento and the San 

 Joaquim. Any one of them may be taken as a type of all the others. At their 

 upper part they are, of course, shallow and narrow ; a few hundred feet deep and a 

 quarter to half of a mile wide, more or less, but steadily increasing in both dimen- 

 sions. Before they reach their debouchure they are ten to twenty miles wide and 

 two to four thousand feet deep. Stand far up among the higher ranges and follow- 

 ing with the eye the stupendous furrow through its windings, fifteen, thirty, forty 

 miles, till all is lost in the blueness of depth and of distance, one often tries to 

 roll back the tide of time and get some glimpse of the days when that plowshare 



