MAN AND THE LAVA BEDS. 



Neale, a mining engineer of much experience and high reputa- 

 tion, to the effect that in 1877 while running the Montezuma 

 tunnel into the gravel underlying the lava of Table Mountain, 

 Tuolumne County, near Rawhide Gulch, and when 1,400 feet 

 from the mouth of the tunnel and between 200 and 300 feet 

 from the edge of the solid lava, he found several spear heads 

 of some dark rock and nearly one foot in length, and, near by, 

 two mortars and a pestle. 



"Mr. Neale declares it utterly impossible that these relics 

 can have reached the position in which they were found ex- 

 cepting at the time the gravel was deposited, and before the 

 lava cap formed. There was not the slighest trace of any 

 disturbance of the mass or of any natural fissure into it by 

 which access could have been obtained either there or in the 

 neighborhood."* 



With regard to this evidence Mr. Becker justly remarked 

 that the mining engineer is of all persons in the world best 

 fitted to determine whether the gravel in such a tunnel had 

 been disturbed, for the chief danger in such mining arises 

 from penetrating old drifts. Therefore a geologist would 

 rather trust an engineer's testimony in such a case than his 

 own. 



The only reason found by Mr. Sinclair (whose general 

 criticisms will be given later) for doubting the facts as here 

 stated arises from the circumstances that the mortar of 

 andesite and the spear heads of obsidian are found in pre- vol- 

 canic gravels. But this ob j ection overlooks the fact that there 

 was extensive commerce between the aboriginal tribes, and 

 that the outflows of lava were by no means contemporaneous 

 in different parts of the Pacific coast. Obsidian, for example, 

 is found in large quantities in the mounds of Ohio, two thou- 

 sand (2000) miles from any original deposit of the material. 



Another bit of evidence from the same vicinity was pre- 

 sented by Mr. Becker at the same meeting of the Geological 



* "Bulletin of Geological Society of America," vol. ii, p. 192.- 



