ANTICIPATIONS OF MAN IN NATURE. 335 



Nature has mined for us in gold. Deep in the rocky re- 

 cesses of the earth lay the precious metal. It must be 

 brought to the light of day. But Nature does not do this 

 till the work of sowing sediments — the seeds of rocky 

 growth — has been completed over all the areas destined to 

 be inhabited by man. Had the deep-treasured gold been 

 brought up in the Mesozoic Ages, the inundations and vi- 

 cissitudes of later times would have scattered it over the 

 breadth of the land and the sea before our race had made 

 its advent. No such false step was taken. It is only after 

 the Tertiary beds have been all deposited that Nature 

 throws up innumerable veins of quartz, which bring along 

 with them the glittering gold. This is well ; but Nature 

 possessed a quartz-crushing machine in the shape of a gla- 

 cier a mile in thickness, and some hundreds, if not thou- 

 sands of miles in horizontal extent, and this she drew over 

 the projecting veins of auriferous quartz and ground them 

 to powder. These, at least, are the general views put for- 

 ward by Sir Roderick Murchison in regard to the principal 

 gold regions of the world. The California geologists, how- 

 ever, aver that the great ice-plow never scored the ribs of 

 the Sierra Nevadas. Nature may have pulverized the gold- 

 quartz of our Western states and territories by some other- 

 agency. Nevertheless, it has been crushed and comminu- 

 ted on a stupendous scale. When this work was done, by 

 whatever means, she brought her gold-washing machine 

 into requisition, and "jigged" the golden sands till the yel- 

 low particles were well assorted, and then strewed them 

 along the narrow ravines to await the attentions of the 

 coming man. 



But we need not go to the golden sands of the Sacra- 

 mento to read the anticipations of man in the arrangements 

 of Nature. What is every well and spring but a subterra- 

 nean stream that has been beguiled to light by the out- 



