The St. Johns herald., 1894-07-26
WORK OF A MAN-MOLE.
Mysterious Doings in a Gulch Near
 San Francisco.
A Lone Digger Who Has Honeycombed the Canyon with His Excavations,
 All of Which Have Been Made During the Night.

Scarce fifteen miles from San Fran cisco, half hidden in the foliage of sur rounding trees, nesting behind the fir crowned ridges and rocky canyons of grim Tamalpais, are the few scattered ranch houses which, with the ubiquit- ous saloon, constitute the little vil- lage of Larlxspur, says the San Fran cisco Examiner. The road runs along the bottom of the canyon, almost hid den by the overhanging redwood trees, till it merges into mere cattle trail. This wild canyon is known locally as Baltimore gulch.
 For five years at least, as vouched for by actual observation, an aged human mole, in the still watches of the night, has silently burrowed and delved in the rich brown earth until the sides of the canyon are literally honeycombed with his tunnels and caverns. His work is carried on always by night, either by the light of the moon or by the will-o'-the-wisp-like flicker of a rusty lantern. These caves mount mp into the hundreds always near the
 
 in circumference and ten feet deep. The bigger holes are carefully fenced around with long redwood poles, around which dead ferns and grass are twisted, and at the bottom is cross Other and smaller holes or caves under the roots of giant redwoods are un- fenced, but filled in with loose earth and heaps of dead brush. These, too, contain the mystic cross. Always the cross.
 For five long years this man gopher has been digging, toiling. Sometimes working for several days continuous ly, at other times only appearing at long intervals, nobody has seen him at work, and what he hopes to find nobody knows, for no one has watched him or listened to his midnight mutter- ings.
 A visit to the scene of these mysteri. ous holes was made by an Examiner correspondent one day recently. It was a hard trip through the dense chaparral and closely growing trees. Hundreds of the fiIled-in excavations were visible, of all shapes and sizes and in every position. Near one, on freshly dug earth, footprints were visible, by another an old sieve was found nodded with age and exposure. Poles, stripped of bark, and masses of dead brush were seen piled around the remains of former excavations.
 A resident of Sausalito, and a keen sportsman, has explored the gulch thoroughly and has often pondered over the meaning of the holes, of whose existence he will testify to. No body knows where the mysterious delver comes from or where he goes when his nights toll is over. Few have seen him come or go, and those that have describe him as wrinkled, bent and weather-beaten old man, with long white hair and beard. It is hard to find the exact location of these places unless one stumbled on them by accident, for though they cover a vast amount of territory they are hid den by the dense vegetation. Only a few days ago his light was seen wan dering about the hill. ~'~
 The labor and expense consequent to remove such tons of earth alone and single-handed, as he has done, and the care and precision with which the poles are set around the freshly dug holes. with the cross always in the bottom, all done in the dampness and darkness of night, suggest that there is some treasure worth hunting for.
 About six years ago a man driven crazy with cancer on the brain wan dered into the mountainous regions around Tamalpais and his body was fi- nally found by campers, who had lost their way, lying in the roots of large redwood tree. He had come from Lodi, and Coroner Eden maintains he was poor, but more than one man tells a story of his wanderings in there with twenty-five thousand dollars which he must have buried, or it may yet be ly- ing in some rotting sack scattered in careless profusion amid the ranlxly growing herbage.
 This may then be the secret of the human gopher's strange work, but the question still remains unanswered: Why the cross? 4- a>sa