Evening star., 1898-12-03

mountains. and the rocky slopes were
pierced by thousand tunnels. The sum-
mitS of the widest mountains were honey
combed in the eager search for other lads.
when the biologists 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 tn brim with volcanic materials.
Lindgren and Turner have studied these
remnants of past river systems, and have
determined the course, dechvity and age of
tn streams, and thu miners have, in sew
eral cases. followed the sinuous courses Of
the channels entirely through the ranges,
washing out the gold and leaving the gravel
still in the tunneled channels. a wood
worm pierCas the oak, leaving only slight
traces of his wonderful accomplishment. But
what remarkable sucC ession of events
this implies; what vast time is involved
and what an age is given to the races that
pounded seeds or acOrns in their mortars
ai' NJ 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 To-Day
find their way to the sea. They had strong
currents, and scored down their slaty or
granite walls and the gold-bearing quartz
seIms intcrsecting them, and filed their
beds with the debris. The freed gold sank
t. the bottoms and the coarse water-Uorn
Materials accumulated to the thickness Of
hundreds of feet.
1t is upon the banks of these rivers that
the race must have lived that left its bones
and It's tO0lS and Utensils imbedded along
with the bodies OF the giant mammals Of
their time, Then came change over these
sceneS-a profound and wonderful change:
pl
lowed, and laVas flowed and streams of
mud descended, until the valleys were filled
up ana n=W channels. system after system
We're formed. At the close of q vast period
Of these activities the deepest valleys were
h.red up 10 overfiowing, and when the flows
o. hasalt, the final products ceased the
"dttrs OF me Sierra had TO begin anew the
cutting of thorougEfares to the Pacific
RMS volcanic period continued through a
I"rse part of the tertiary age-a period not
10 be estimated in thousands but In hun-
0reds of thousands of years
But b@nold the changes that have since
taken pace! These Streams-the Marce1
the TuolumnH. the Stanisaus. the American
river, the inba and others-have cut rheir
way hy the slew processes of erosion dow,
oeep INTO the bowels of the earth and now
run their courses i'll valleys 1000 feet deem
"hG many miles in width, so profound pre-
ciptoHs and Inaccessible that it is "A DAVIS
Journey 10 cross them, where indeed they
can be crossed at all by human feet.
.fhe traveller who dcscends into ono of
Ih'Sc great canons and painfully works his
way up the opposite side to the creste
Wher" the miners are tunneling the river
beds of former periods finds himsnrf soriI.
oquizlng IN the following vein: Is If nos
sible that man can have dWeIt i'm this Wild
land so long as this, while these mountains
We're cared out and the vast v9JIevs
formed by the tedious SCULPTURE ~ tho
mountain streams? 1t, indeed surpasses
belief, and unless the most weighty eyi-
dence is forthcoming. the whole story of
duf1erouS gravel man must fall
But this is not all the geologist has tn
zen or the flight of time. When the val
leSs hau Deen deepencd nearly to their
present beds the glacial period came on,
ana the ice reshaped them and modelled the
marvellous contours of which Yosemite &c \
mn type. From the poirt 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 uIacioI
man of Europe had not, even at this late
date, reached the status of culture attained
by his California precursor million years
before, II such a precursor there ever was
Table Mountain.
This panoramic sketch is not well cal
culated TO give idea of the magnitude
of the geographical features with which We
have to deal. but ii may serve to show
something of the geological relations. Table
mountain, A is a long narrow table land ex-
two valleys from 1880 to 1900 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 what was originally the valley is now
the mountain crest. 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 1t is from these deep
dggiLgs 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
| twenty miles away, at c, is Bald mount ain
| where, in a deep tunnel in formations cor
responding to those of Table mountain the
| Calavefas skull was found
STRANGER than all are soma of tho 70 ots