20 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



whatever made them, were easily transmitted to 

 me, since my ear was practically in contact with the 

 earth. Who knows but it was "the fellow in the 

 cellarage," old Truepenny himself? 



Some miles to the south is Andreas Caiion, an- 

 other of the gateways of the same mountain. It also 

 is named after an Indian, old Captain Andreas, the 

 remains of whose adobe hut and orchard of vines and 

 figs are yet in evidence. Here the following winter I 

 camped for nearly three months, gratifying aborigi- 

 nal instincts by a return to cave life. The cavern 

 which served for dining-room, study, and kitchen 

 had been the home of Indians, and was adorned with 

 their picture-writings, while a sort of upper story was 

 quite a museum of age-dimmed records in red and 

 black. One upright stone was worn into grooves like 

 knuckles, where arrow-shafts had been smoothed; 

 another showed evidence of having been used for 

 polishing the obsidian points. The great table-like 

 rock where I kept a store of hay for my horse Ka- 

 weah (Mesquit and I had had a difference and parted) 

 was bored in a dozen places with circular holes where 

 acorn and mesquit meal had been ground by gene- 

 rations of diligent squaws, whose deer-horn awls and 

 ornaments of shell and clay I occasionally unearthed : 

 as I did also bones in remarkable numbers and of 

 questionable shapes. 



Of Andreas, now long gathered to his fathers, the 

 word goes that he was given to the distilling of 

 aguardiente from his grapes, breaking thereby the 

 law of the land. However, considering that the art 

 had been learned from the whites, that he had no 



