Lavvson.J 



Geology of Carmelo Bay. 



47 



ing light, those on the north side of the valley being particularly 

 distinct from this point of view. 



Huckleberry Hill Beach. — The highest strand yet observed by us 

 is best registered on Huckleberry Hill, a little to the north of the 

 northern limits of our map. In coming from Monterey towards 

 Carmelo Bay over the main coast road there is a steady upward 

 grade for something over two miles to a wind gap at an elevation of 

 about 585 feet. At this point the seventeen-mile pleasure drive 

 leaves the main road by a gate. Running out west-northwestward 

 from this wind gap is a ridge which increases in elevation for about 

 a mile and then drops away abruptly to a plain which encircles the 

 end of it, several hundred feet below. Over the surface of this ridge, 

 which is rather flat-topped in north and south profile, are scattered 

 pebbles and bowlders, very sparingly at first, but more and more 

 abundantly as one goes westward. There is also a sandy soil con- 

 taining fragments of rock foreign to the underlying formations, and 

 occasional outcrops of a yellow plastic clay may be observed. 

 Towards the end of the ridge, with the increasing elevation, the peb- 

 bles and bowlders increase in numbers till they finally culminate in a 

 well-defined round-topped beach, the crest of which is 800 feet above 

 the tide. A large opening or pit has been made in the beach, the 

 material being used for ballast on the roads of the vicinity, so that 

 the composition, structure, and relations of the beach are happily 

 revealed. The material composing it consists of water-worn pebbles 

 and bowlders, many of the latter being a foot or more in diameter. 

 The rocks represented by the pebbles are various, but granite (Santa 

 Lucia) preponderates greatly, that being the underlying terrane. 

 These pebbles and bowlders of granite, which necessarily must have 

 been fresh and hard when left by the wave action on the beach, are 

 now nearly afl rotten and disintegrated. It is this rotten product of 

 the secular decay of the pebbles and bowlders which is quarried for 

 road ballast, being easily worked with pick and shovel, while the 

 occasional harder bowlders are left on the floor of the pit. Among 

 the smaller undecomposed pebbles were gathered numerous pieces 

 of the white shale of the Monterey series, fragments of granite sim- 

 ilar to that of the small dykes which intersect the Santa Lucia mass, 

 fragments of pegmatite from the dykes which cut the same mass, 



