846 The Ancient Man of Calaveras. [November, 



ered the gravel after the gravel was in its present form and 

 position. That is sure, for after the gravel was thus imbedded, it 

 has most certainly never been disturbed until within these last 

 few years the miners have dug into it in search of gold. To the 

 gravel then below the lava, we will turn our attention. 



Looking out from Carson hill, in Calaveras county, you see 

 across the Stanislas in Tuolumne, a long mountain ridge. It ex- 

 tends down into the plain, where it ends very abruptly, while its 

 upper limit is out of sight away among the main heights of the 

 Sierra Nevada. It looks like a huge railroad embankment, and 

 suggests to you that idea, but men do not make railroad dykes 

 forty miles long and 1500 to 3000 feet high. That which gives 

 it its smooth even upper surface is basalt, that is, ancient lava ; 

 the lower part is of looser materials. The thickness of the basalt 

 varies at different points, being here and there hundreds of feet 

 thicker than it is at other places a mile or two either above or 

 below. This is Table mountain, a name which has been famous 

 in the history of California, as we shall see. 



The question occurs to us : How came Table mountain to 

 exist? That basalt, when it was erupted, was fluid like other 

 lava. How could it be piled up so thick and so abrupt (for its sides 

 are often perpendicular) on that high mountain ridge, and remain 

 there ? Why did it not spread itself out laterally and cover the 

 plain ? But one answer to these questions can be given : There 



When that eruption took place, and the crater or fissure opened, 

 far up near the summit of the Sierra Nevada, it naturally flowed 

 into the bed of the first stream which crossed its track. This it 

 filled and followed down until, when the eruption ended, the old 

 river bed, away down to the plain, was blocked up by tne solid 

 volcanic rock, and the waters which should have been there, were 

 finding their way by some other track. 



As time passed on, the side of the mountain range was yield- 

 ing to atmospheric influences. The flowing water was carrying 

 off the softer material on each side of the hard basalt, which had 

 filled and obliterated the old river-bed; the Tuolumne river on 

 the south and the Stanislas on the north, with their tributaries, 

 were formed, and scooped out their present valleys, and thus 

 Table mountain, which had been deposited in t 

 mountain torrent, with high ridges confining it, became 



itself : 



