848 The Ancient Man of Calaveras. [November, 



tain. 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 interval 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 erup- 

 tion of which mention has been made. 



The western slope of the Sierra Nevada is furrowed with enor- 

 mous gorges reaching from the summit ridges to the plains of the 

 Sacramento 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 a mile wide, more or less, but steadily increasing 

 in both dimensions. Before they reach their debouchure they are 

 ten to twenty miles wide and two to four thousand feet deep. 

 Standing far up among the higher ranges and following 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 began its work. But the blueness 

 of the chasm is only a faint index of the dimness which comes 

 across the mental vision. It is idle to suggest to one thus stand- 

 ing and looking down the canon of the Yuba, or the American, 

 or the Tuolumne, that water can have done that work (and water 

 certainly has done it) within an interval which, reckoning years 

 by thousands, must not have written against it very, very many. 

 We will not specify how many, but the number surely is great. 



And all this scooping out of canons, this furrowing the- west- 

 ern Sierra slope into its configuration of the present era, has been 

 done since the Table mountain lava flowed. Of that there can 

 be no question. The evidence is too plain to admit a doubt. 



If now we find the remains of man, or works which none but 

 man could have made, among the gravel-beds beneath Table 

 mountain, or in any other place amid the undisturbed pay-dirt, 

 we cannot fail to know that human hands and human brains had 

 done their work before the immense canons of the Sierra Nevada 



commenced their formation in the little furrows 

 down which the waters trickled. 



ummit 



