Prof. W. H. Holiues. 
mountains, and the rocky slopes were 
pierced by a thousand tunnels. The sum- 
:imits of the wildest mountains were honey- 
combed in the eager search for other leads. 
|“When the geologists finally appeared 
upon the scene the strange fact was devel- 
oped that these deposits of gravels were of 
river formation, and that they really rep- 
resented fossil rivers, the grandfathers and 
great grandfathers of the present rivers, 
"which, in early tertiary times, had been 
clogged with gold-bearing gravel and then 
filled to the brim with volcanic materials. 
Lindgren and Turner have studied these 
remnants of past river systems, and have 
determined the course, declivity and age of 
the streams, and the miners have, in sev- 
eral eases, followed the sinuous courses of 
the channels entirely through the ranges, 
washing out the gold and leaving' the gravel 
still in the tunneled channels, .as a wood- 
worm pierces the oak, leaving only slight 
traces of his wonderful accomplishment. But 
what a remarkable succession of events 
this implies; what a vast time is involved 
and what an age is given to the races that 
pounded seeds or acorns in their mortars 
along' the banks of those far-away ances- 
tors of our modern rivers. 
Work of Rivers. 
The story they tell is about as follows: 
The tertiary rivers ran out across the high 
land pretty much as the streams of today 
find their 'way to the sea. They had strong 
currents, . and scored down their slaty or 
granite w alls and the gold-bearing quartz 
seams intersecting them, and filled their 
beds with the debris. The freed gold sank 
to the bottoms and the coarse water-worn 
materials accumulated to the thickness of 
hundreds of feet. 
“It is upon the banks of these rivers that 
the race must have lived that left its bones 
and its tools and utensils imbedded along 
with the bodies of the giant mammals of 
their lime. Then came a change over these 
scenes — a profound and wonderful change; 
a period of great volcanic activity fol- 
lowed, and lavas flowed and streams of 
mud descended, until the valleys were filled 
up, and new channels, system after system, 
were formed. _ At the close of a vast period 
of these activities the deepest valleys were 
fiLed up to overflowing, and when the flows 
of basalt, the final products, ceased the 
waters of the Sierra had to begin anew the 
cutting of thoroughfares, to the Pacific. 
This volcanic period continued through a 
large part of the tertiary age-- a period not 
to be estimated in thousands, but in hun- 
dreds of. thousands of years . 
“But behold the changes that have since" 
taken place! These streams— the Marced, 
the Tuolumne, the Stanislaus, the American 
river, the. Yuba and others— have cut, their 
way by tire slew processes of erosion down 
deep into the bowels of the earth, and now- 
run their courses in valleys 2,000 feet deep 
and many miles in width, so profound, pre- 
cipitous and inaccessible that it is a day’s 
journey to cross them, where indeed they 
can be crossed at all by human feet. 
“The traveler who descends into one of 
these great canons and painfully works his 
■way up the opposite side to the crests, 
where the miners are tunneling the river 
beds of former periods, finds himself solil- 
oquizing in the, following vein: ‘Is it pos- 
sible that man can have dwelt in this wild 
land so long as this, while these mountains 
were carved out and the vast valleys 
formed by the tedious sculpture of the 
mountain . streams? It, indeed, surpasses 
belief, and unless the most weighty evi- 
dence is forthcoming, the whole story of 
auriferous gravel man must fall.’ 
“But this is not all the geologist has to 
tell of the flight of time. When the val- 
leys had been deepened nearly., to their 
present beds the glacial period came on, 
and the ice reshaped them and modeled the 
marvelous contours of which Yosemite is a 
fine type. From the point of view of the 
man of the old river systems the glacial 
period is recent time, but this is the period 
of the paleolithic man of New Jersey and 
Ohio, if such there was, and the glacial 
man of Europe had not, even at this late 
elate, reached the status of culture attained 
by his California precursor a million years 
before, if such a precursor there ever was. 
Table Mountain. 
“This panoramic sketch is not well cal- 
culated to give an idea of the magnitude 
of the geographical features with which we 
have to deal, but it may serve to show 
something of the geological relations. Table 
mountain, A is a long narrow table land ex- 
tending outward toward the west between 
two valleys from 1,500 to 2,000 feet deep. 
The summit of the mountain is sinuous as 
a serpent, for it is the stream of lava that 
flowed into the bed of the ancient river 
whose gravely, gold-bearing bed is seen in 
the section at B. The streams cut their 
channels at the sides because the lava was 
harder than the neighboring formations, 
and Vv-hat was originally the valley is now 
the mountain cres-t. The dotted lines in 
the section show how the tunnels pierce the 
sides of the mountain and reach the main 
channel of the old stream in the heart of 
the mountain, and it is from these deep 
digging's under Table mountain that many 
of the human relics are said to have been 
brought forth. At C we have the undis- 
turbed formations of the mountain. At B 
is Tuttletown, where still lives ‘Truthful 
James.’ To the left is the profound Valley 
of the Stanislaus, and beyond this, and 
tw r enty miles away, at C, is Bald mountain, 
where, in a deep tunnel in formations cor- 
responding’ to those of Table mountain, the 
Calaveras skull was' found. 
“Stranger than all are seme of the facts 
encountered when we come to consider the 
physical characteristics and culture of 
auriferous gravel man. The human crea- 
ture of a period so remote might bs expect- 
ed to betray some characteristics suggestive 
of h.is connection with the lower forms, for 
the race of mammals was then young’, but 
the Calaveras skull, about which such a 
marvelous chapter in history has been con- 
structed, belonged to a man quite equal to 
the average man of today in craniological 
development, and the evolutionist, if we 
accept the antiquity of the specimen, must 
receive a shock from this fact quite as 
stunning as does the ordinary descendant 
of Adam and Eve. Perhaps, as Bret Harte, 
planet, giving thee an air that’s somewhat 
in addressing, this skull, forcibly suggests— 
“ ‘The professor slightly antedated by 
some thousand years thy advent on this 
belter fitted for cold-blooded creatures.’ 
“Perhaps the most striking feature of 
this strange story of early tertiary hu- 
manity is that the traces of his activities, 
so plentifully brought to light, indicate not 
that he wa.s struggling with the beginnings 
of the most elementary arts, as we might 
reasonably expect, but that he had reached 
the ripe state of culture known as neolithic, 
and ground his acorns in well-rounded and 
neatly decorated stone mortars, with sym- 
metric, artistically shaped pestles, shaped 
fine obsidian blades for use in the chase, 
decorated his person with well-wrought 
beads and employed fancifully shaped 
stones of various kinds in his arts or cere- 
monies. Along with these things went, no 
doubt, the appropriate accompaniments . of 
advanced society, institutions and customs, 
and when we come to compare these varied 
objects with the tools and utensils of the 
tribes of men now living in California we 
are forcibly struck with the resemblances, 
and, indeed, in many cases with the abso- 
lute identity of the forms. This again 
caused the cautious investigator to pause 
and ask, ‘Is it not possible that some mis- 
take has been made and that auriferous 
gravel man is a myth?’ But we turn to 
the evidence, to the writings of Whitney, 
Becker and others and to the statements 
of many miners and mining people, and 
are compelled to acknowledge its force. 
The Affidavits. 
“Mr. Thomas Matteson found the Cala- 
veras skull in his shaft on Bald mountain 
at the depth of 125 feet, and the following 
affidavit is furnished by Professor W hitney, 
who took the trouble to visit the mine and 
secure it: 
“SAN ANDREAS, Calaveras county, Cal., 
“January 3, 1874. 
“This is to certify that I, the undersigned, 
did, about the year 1858, dig out of some 
mining claims known as the Stanislaus 
Company, situated in Table mountain, Tuo- 
lumne county, opposite 6’Byrn’s Ferry, on 
the Stanislaus riv.er, a stone hatchet, sim- 
ilar in, shape to this (here is inscribed a 
rough drawing of a cutting implement of a 
triangular shape) with a hole through it 
for a handle, near the middle. Its size was 
four inches across the edge, and length j 
about six inches. It had evidently been i 
made by human hands. The above relic 
\yp>s found from sixty to seventy-five feet 
"from the surface gravel, under the basalt 
and about 300 feet in from the mouth of the 
' tunnel. There were also some stone mor- 
uirs found at about the same time and 
place and at various times where there 
were also found numerous fossil bones of 
different animals, and fossil wood. 
“(Signed JOHN CAROM. 
. “Subscribed and sworn to before me, 
“WM. O. SWANSON, Justice of Feace, 
“Calaveras county, CaL 
“And, again, there is the sworn statement 
of Mr. J. H. Neale of Sonora, given by Dr. 
Becker: 
“SENORA, August 2 1890. 
“In 1877 Mr. J. H. Neale was superintend- 
ent or the Montezuma Tunnel Company and 
ran the Montezuma tunnel into the gravel 
underlying the lava of Table mountain, 
Tuolumne county. The mouth of the tun- 
nel is near the road which leads in a south- 
erly direction from Rawhide camp, and 
about three miles from that place. The 
mouth is approximately 1,200 feet from the 
present edge of the solid lava cap of the 
mountain. The course of the tunnel is a 
little north of east. 
‘ ‘At a distance of 1,400 and 1,500 feet from 
the mouth of the tunnel or of between 200 
and 300 feet beyond the edge of the solid 
lava, Mr. Neale saw several spear heads, of 
some dark rock and nearly one foot in 
length. On exploring further, he himself 
found a small mortar, three or four inches 
in diameter and of irregular shape. This 
was discovered within a foot or two of 
spear heads. He then found a large, well- 
formed pestle, now the property of Dr. R, 
L. Bromley, and near by a. large and very 
irregular mortar, also at present the prop- 
erty of Dr. Bromley. - ; 
“All of these relics were found' the same ,. 
afternoon, and were within a few feet of I 
one another and close to the bed rock, per- 
haps wdthin one foot of it. 
“Mr. Neale declares it utterly impossible 
that these relics can have reached the posi- jj 
tion in which they were found excepting at : 
the time the gravel was deposited, and be- 
fore the lava cap formed. Tiiiere -was not 
the slightest trace of any disturbance of the 
