1 882.] The Ancient Man of Calaveras. 853 



That it came to Professor Whitney from the hands of Mr. Mat- 

 tison (or as I always heard him called, Matthewson), of Angels 

 Camp, is certain. Where did Mr. Matthewson get that skull ? I 

 do not know, nor is the precise spot of much consequence. • He 

 says he took it from his shaft near what was then called the 

 Forks of the Road, above Angels. Suppose he did, or suppose 

 he foolishly tried to humbug the geologist, what does it matter ? 

 He got the skull somewhere, and wherever it might have been 

 first found, it surely was imbedded in the auriferous gravel, and it 

 had become so imbedded at the time the gravel was originally 

 deposited. 



You say, that is a bold assertion ; how do you know it ? I 

 will tell you ; I know it, because the skull fold me so. I saw it and 

 examined it carefully at the time when it first reached Professor 

 Whitney's hands. It was not only incrusted with sand and gravel, 

 but its cavities were crowded with the same material ; and that 

 material was of a peculiar sort, a sort which I had had occasion to 

 know thoroughly. It was the the common " cement " or " dirt " 

 ol the miners; that known in books as the auriferous gravel. 

 This is an article " sui generis-" it is not easily imitated. No 

 skill possessed by Mr. Matthewson or any one else could have 

 been sufficient to give the skull the characters which it had as I 

 saw it. It is most certainly no fabrication. 



But it has been said that it is a modern skull which had be- 

 come incrusted after a few years of interment. This assertion, 

 however, is never made by any one knowing the region. The 

 gravel has not the slightest tendency toward an action of that 

 sort. The skull would either decay and waste away, or it would 

 remain unchanged ; and added to this comes in the fact that the 

 hollows of the skull were crowded with the solidified and 

 cemented sand, in such a way as they could have been only by 

 its being driven into them in a semi-fluid mass, a condition which 

 the gravels have never had since they were first laid down. 



No, no ! Let the skull tell its own story, and believe what it 

 says, because it brings its own proof. Whatever age belongs to 

 the gravel deposit under Table mountain belongs to the Calaveras 

 skull, entirely irrespective of the question of honesty or dishon- 

 esty in the alleged finder. Wherever he found it, I believe its 

 a ge to be beyond cavil. 



Its degree of fossilization has not been here insisted upon, 



