Prehistoric Man on the Pacific Coast

CALIFORNIA, after having been a potent factor in the history of modern times, seems likely to contribute in a very positive manner to our knowledge of the earliest history of mankind. An object of greatest moment with archæologists is to find early relics of man so related to geological changes as to give definite information concerning their antiquity. An implement or skeleton found upon the surface may be of great antiquity ; the same things found imbedded in certain well-defined geological strata must be of great antiquity, and thus the sciences of archæology and geology become united in their interests.

About twenty-five years ago much discussion was created by the report that implements and human relics of tertiary age had been found upon the flanks of the Sierra Nevada in California. The geologist responsible for this report was Professor J. D. Whitney, of Harvard College, then and for some years after in charge of the Geological Survey of California. The facts of most interest reported by him relate to a region in the vicinity of Sonora, near the boundary line between Tuolumne and Calaveras counties, and about one hundred and fifty miles directly east of San Francisco. This is a portion of California in which the early gold excitement was intense; many million dollars’ worth of the metal having been found in the surface gravels of the vicinity. Before giving, however, the particulars about the discovery of the Calaveras skull and other relics of early man in the same neighborhood, it will be profitable to fix the reader’s attention upon the geological problems relating to the case.

By the geologist the whole region west of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers is spoken of as new. In the earliest geological times, when the Atlantic coast was already outlined, and the northeastern part of the continent had been elevated long enough to show signs of great age, the whole area west of the Mississippi Valley, with the exception, perhaps, of some long, low lines of islands marking the course of the Rocky and Sierra Nevada mountains, was still beneath the ocean level. As the building of the continent proceeded, and the great areas of stratified rock between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi River were formed, the development was still slow west of this region; so that, long after the eastern half of the continent had assumed nearly its present form, it was separated from the western part by a vast expanse of water, extending from the Mississippi to the very edge of the Rocky Mountains. These plains were for the most part deposited during the cretaceous period, which just preceded the tertiary. At the close of the cretaceous period, the whole region slowly rose from its watery depths. So extensive was the area of elevation, however, that the strata were scarcely disturbed, and they have retained still their practically horizontal position, sloping gradually up to the west from Omaha at an average rate of not more than ten feet to the mile.

But the elevation of this region was not uniform in all its parts, and freshwater lakes occupied the depressions, and remained for a long time, covering a great portion of Nebraska and Wyoming, and territory adjacent. These lakes lasted through the tertiary period, and there were accumulated in them the immense beds of sediment inclosing the gigantic reptiles and the diminutive fossil horses concerning which so much has been written by Professors Cope and Marsh. From these fossils it appears that the shores of these lakes witnessed several of the most important stages in the evolution of existing animals.

While this period of fresh-water lakes was obtaining east of the Rocky Mountains, what is now the Pacific coast still remained deep beneath the level of the sea. The Coast Range, which presents a solid front to the Pacific Ocean from the straits of Juan de Fuca to the Bay of San Francisco, and thence onward to beyond the southern limit of California, consists of rocks containing marine fossils entirely of tertiary age. At the time of their deposition, the waters of the Pacific beat directly against the flanks of the Sierra Nevada, more than one hundred miles to the east. In that crumpling of the earth’s crust, however, which has periodically built, one by one, the various mountain systems of the world, the Coast Range was at last thrust as a barrier between the flanks of the Sierra and the Pacific Ocean, leaving between the old mountain systems and the new one of the most remarkable valleys in the world. Entering through the Golden Gate to the Bay of San Francisco, and ascending its principal eastern tributary for about fifty miles, the traveler finds himself where the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers meet, the one coming from the north, the other from the south. These streams bring together the drainage of valleys whose united length is more than four hundred miles, their breadth between the mountains averaging something like seventy-five miles. Eastward from these valleys the ascent to the summits of the Sierra Nevada is pretty regular, and is accomplished in a distance of about one hundred miles.

From these heights, with many peaks upwards of fourteen thousand feet above the sea, one sees upon the horizon to the west the continuous line of the Coast Range, while to the east he looks out on the barren wastes of the great inclosed basin, extending several hundred miles in width to the Wahsatch Mountains. For about two thousand feet up the western flanks of the Sierra the rocks consist of hard slatestone of the triassic period, which comes in the geological horizon just below the cretaceous strata so extensively developed east of the Rocky Mountains. The fact that the western foothills of the Sierra belong to the triassic age shows that they were existing as dry land during the long period required for the deposition of the sediment now constituting the Coast Range ; otherwise tertiary deposits would have covered the foothills of the Sierra also. The upper part of the Sierra consists of massive granite, which may have existed as dry land from a very early geological period.

We have already remarked that the ascent eastward from this central valley of California to the summit of the Sierra is along a pretty regular slope, and can be made without great inconvenience. But if, at any point midway between the base and the summit, one endeavors to go north or south parallel with the axis of the range, he finds the journey beset with great difficulties. The immense snowfall in the higher altitudes gives rise to frequent torrents, which, in flowing down the western flanks, have in all cases worn gorges of great depth, scarcely ever less than two thousand feet, and sometimes much more. The Yosemite and Hetch-Hetchy valleys are the best known examples, the former being an enlargement of the gorge of the Merced River, and the latter of that of the Tuolumne.

All along the flanks of the Sierra, also, from two to four thousand feet above the base, there exists a most remarkable belt of gravel which was doubtless deposited by streams corresponding in the main with existing lines of drainage, but at a time when the supply of water was greater than at present, and when there were no deep channels to determine and limit, as now, the direction of the water’s flow. The deep mountain gorges had not yet been made. These gravels are of enormous extent, and in places hundreds of feet in depth, and have proved to be one of the greatest depositories of gold ever discovered. It is the activity of miners in searching for this coveted metal which has laid the gravel banks open to the inspection of scientific men, and so revealed the hidden archæological treasures. Now for more than forty years miners have been at work upon these banks by every conceivable process, — with butcher-knives, picks, shovels, gunpowder, dynamite, and jets of water, — to separate the gold from the immense quantities of gravel with which it is associated.

In these operations there have, from time to time, come to light sufficient relics of human workmanship to give a faint clue to the domestic arts prevailing in the region at the time of the deposition of the gravel; but the circumstances have not been favorable either for the discovery or the preservation of many relics of any kind. Especially is this true of the more recent modes of mining, in which the vast deposits are attacked by directing against them jets of water under tremendous hydraulic pressure, such as to tear everything to pieces. Hence we cannot suppose that anything more than a small part of the remains either of animals or of man and his workmanship which these beds of gravel originally contained has been saved from destruction. The introduction of hydraulic mining will account also for the fact that the most of the discoveries valuable to the palæontologist and to the archæologist were made in the earlier periods of the gold excitement, when simpler modes of mining were in vogue.

As is to be expected, many of the objects of archæological interest coming to the notice of the miners are poorly authenticated, since, in the eagerness shown for the gold, little attention has been paid to objects of mere curiosity. But from many different places stone mortars and pestles of rude manufacture have been reported by the miners as discovered in the gold-bearing gravel. Whether in most cases these objects may not have fallen down from near the surface of the gravel, and whether in some instances their location in the gravel may not have been determined by intrusive burial or by local landslides, it is impossible to determine, as quite generally the miners are too intent on their main business to observe all these particulars or retain them in their memory. But so many of such discoveries have been reported as to make it altogether improbable that the miners were in every case mistaken; and we must conclude that rude stone implements do actually occur in connection with the bones of various extinct animals in the undisturbed strata of the gold-bearing gravel.

Properly enough, however, Professor Whitney and other scientific men have been slow to build any archæological theory except on facts which were capable of definite proof; and as in this instance we are called upon to prove our facts as well as our theories, since up to the present time both have been persistently challenged, it will be necessary to discuss somewhat in detail the evidence adduced by Professor Whitney some years ago, as well as to present the confirmatory evidence which has recently come to light.

As will have been perceived, the reported occurrence of human remains in uncovered banks of gravel is specially open to suspicion from the possibility of the remains having been buried subsequent to the deposition of the material. Whether this were the case or not might indeed be determined by a well-trained and accurate observer, if his attention were called to the situation in time; but the chances of having such an observer upon the ground at the instant of discovery are, as any one can see, very small. It becomes, therefore, an object of great importance to find remains in such a situation that their position can be satisfactorily proved by the ordinary kinds of evidence. The opportunity to obtain such proof is presented by the existence of another class of geological facts, which we will now describe.

One of the most remarkable of all the natural features west of the Rocky Mountains is to be found in the extensive lava beds which cover so much of the surface. So immense are these deposits that when they were first reported the European geologists, with general consent, discredited the stories, and set them down as Western exaggerations. But all are now convinced that at the first the half had not been told. There are hundreds of thousands of square miles west of the Rocky Mountains which have been covered by these vast lava flows; and this since the beginning of the tertiary period, and in considerable part during the glacial period. The larger and more continuous area extends from the northern part of California, over Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, and up the Snake River valley in Idaho to the Yellowstone Park.

The thickness of these lava deposits is as surprising as their superficial extent. For fifty miles or more the great cañon of Snake River, in the vicinity of Shoshone Falls in Idaho, is bounded on either side by perpendicular walls of columnar basalt from 300 to 700 feet in height, and in a portion of its course by perpendicular walls 1000 feet in height, the upper half of which is basalt, and the lower half an older eruptive rock. At the cascades of the Columbia River, which occur where the stream cuts through the axis of the Cascade Mountains, the rocks on either side, to a height of from 3000 to 4000 feet, consist of this late tertiary or post-tertiary basalt, the whole mountain range at this point being composed of that material; while seventy miles to the south of this the great basaltic plain has been cut into by the Deschutes River for a distance of one hundred and forty miles, to a depth of from 1000 to 2500 feet, without reaching the bottom of the lava.

But it would be a mistake to think of all this lava as belonging to one continuous flow. Examination shows, on the contrary, that there has been a great number of centres of eruption, and in places, especially in the Snake River valley, numerous circular, fresh - looking craters, a few hundred feet in height, dot the surface of the great basaltic plain. Many of these can be seen by the traveler from the car windows on the Oregon Short Line Railroad, which passes through Idaho. These craters are not sufficient, however, to account for the vast lava plains surrounding them. They represent rather points where the expiring volcanic forces have kept relief vents open, which in some cases have been active until within a few centuries. But the great mass of the lava must have poured forth from fissures now covered from sight by their own ejected material. In some distant geological age, when the erosive agencies ever at work shall have laid bare the roots of these mountains, as has already been done in northern Scotland and in New England, these filledup fissures will appear as trap-dykes, like those with which we are familiar in the Palisades of the Hudson, and in East and West Rocks, on either side of New Haven.

The geological disturbances which caused these late, or post-tertiary, lava flows on the Pacific coast, while greatest north of California, extended with more or less force all the way down to the Mexican border, especially in the great basin between the Rocky and the Sierra Nevada mountains. In one place, as Major Powell has detailed, the lava poured into the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, which was already in existence, and dammed up the waters of that river, making a temporary lake, which must have continued until the stream had time to wear down a new channel through the lava dam. West of the Sierra Nevada in California the lava flows were infrequent, except in the northern part of the State ; but, fortunately, in the vicinity of Sonora there was one which has produced just the conditions which the archæologist so strongly desires to find.

During the deposition of the goldbearing gravel upon the western flanks of the Sierra, and especially towards the latter part of that period, there were great outbursts of volcanic material near the summits of the range, and twenty or twenty-five miles north of Yosemite Park. When this eruption had nearly spent itself, a vast stream of liquid lava flowed down the side of the mountain through the shallow valley of the ancient Stanislaus River, filling up its channel, and covering its extensive gravel deposits. Thus these gravels have been preserved from disturbance, and the antiquity of the objects of geological or archæological interest found in them is certified to by the best of testimony. For forty miles or more from its source this molten stream came down the mountain side, following nearly the line between Calaveras and Tuolumne counties, and extending fifteen or twenty miles beyond Sonora at two or three points. The modern Stanislaus River has cut across its former bed, and now flows in a gorge from 1200 to 2000 feet deeper than the old valley which was occupied and filled up by the ancient lava stream ; and the long, winding, even surface of this lava appears as a conspicuous flat - topped ridge, known as Table Mountain. In many places the rims of the valley which originally directed the course of the lava flow have been worn away by existing streams, so that the walls on either side present a perpendicular face, one hundred feet or more in height.

Early in the mining excitement, it was found that the auriferous gravel of the ancient Stanislaus River ran under Table Mountain, and an incredible amount of money has been expended in efforts to penetrate it, and reach its depositories of precious metal. Millions of dollars are said to have been spent in driving tunnels through the rim rock, and in sinking shafts from the surface of the lava, in order to bring to the light of day the buried treasures of this singularly preserved deposit.

The evidence that human implements and fragments of the human skeleton have been found in the stratum of gravel underneath the lava of Table Mountain seems to be abundantly sufficient; but as the witnesses have been challenged, and as so much depends upon the truth of their report, it is necessary to give the evidence again in some detail. One of the most active collectors in the vicinity of Sonora was Dr. Shell, a man of unquestioned reputation and intelligence. At different times from 1850 to 1800 various implements and a human jaw were given to him by miners, with the statement that they came “from under Table Mountain,” — a form of statement which we have seen can have no ambiguity of meaning. If, therefore, these miners told the truth, the objects in question must have lain in the position in which they were found ever since the period of this great lava flow. One of the stone implements thus described seems to have served as the handle for a bow, and there were, besides, one or two spearheads and “ several scoops or ladles with well-shaped handles.” With reference to these objects, Professor Whitney remarks that there is no evidence except the simple word of the miners ; but in the absence of any motive for deception, as in this case, when they were presented to a collector without price, that ought to be sufficient to establish the facts. There was, however, one object in this collection, namely, a stone implement for grinding, which Dr. Snell says he himself took from a carload of dirt as it came out of one of the shafts under Table Mountain.

During this same decade, Hon. Paul K. Hubbs, a well-known citizen of Vallejo, Cal., and at one time state superintendent of public instruction, found a portion of a human skull in the mining sluice into which the dirt from one of the shafts under Table Mountain was being shoveled ; and there was clinging to the specimen, when found, portions of the gold-bearing gravel. This fragment was given by Mr. Hubbs to Rev. C. F. Winslow, who divided it into two pieces, and sent one to the Boston Society of Natural History, the other to the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences; and an account of the discovery is given in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History for October, 1857. The point in the tunnel from which the bucketful of dirt containing this object came was 180 feet below the surface of Table Mountain. At about the same time, one of the owners found in this shaft, also, a large stone mortar, fifteen inches in diameter ; but no pains was taken to preserve it, and it has disappeared, as the fragment of the skull would have done except for the intelligent interest in it of Mr. Hubbs and Mr. Winslow. Important as was this discovery by Mr. Hubbs, and though promptly reported to two of the best known scientific societies of the country, it attracted no general notice until Professor Whitney’s attention was turned to it, ten or twelve years later, when the ground was revisited, the original parties were questioned, and the facts as above stated were placed beyond reasonable doubt.

Upon making further inquiry, Professor Whitney found in the hands of the miners various other articles said to have come from under the Sonora Table Mountain. Among these was a large white marble bead, about an inch and a half long and an inch and a quarter in diameter, with a perforation suitable for a string. This bead was taken in 1853, by Mr. Oliver W. Stevens, from a carload of gravel as it came out of the tunnel. The load was obtained 200 feet in, and 125 feet below the surface of the lava. Beside the bead there was found the tooth of a mastodon. Both objects bore evidence in themselves to the situation from which they came, being partially incrusted with sulphuret of iron. Mr. Llewellyn Price also gave to Professor Whitney the particulars concerning a stone mortar, about thirty inches in circumference, which he himself found in 1862 in what was known as the Boston tunnel, about 1800 feet in from its mouth, and where the overlying lava was more than sixty feet deep.

It will be observed that these are all independent cases of evidence, dating from the time of greatest activity in pushing mines under this lava deposit. Unfortunately, the expense of reaching the gravel was so great that after a time the work was suspended in nearly all the mines. It is estimated that in their efforts to get the gold from under Table Mountain the miners spent a million dollars more than was ever actually returned to them. But up to the present time spasmodic efforts have been made to reach this gold, and the discoveries which have recently been made will, in the opinion of many, add greatly to the force of the evidence previously detailed as collected by Professor Whitney.

At the meeting of the Geological Society of America, December 30, 1890, three such recent archæological discoveries were reported as from under Table Mountain. Mr. George F. Becker (one of the most accomplished and able of the gentlemen employed upon the present staff of the United States Geological Survey, to whom has been committed the responsible work of reporting upon the gold-bearing gravels of California) exhibited to the society a stone mortar and some arrowheads or spearheads, with the sworn statement from Mr. J. H. Neale, a well-known mining superintendent, of established character, that in 1877 he took them with his own hand from undisturbed gravel in the mine of which he had charge at Rawhide Gulch, under the lava of Table Mountain, about five miles southwest of Sonora. Upon this testimony, Mr. Becker justly remarked that the mining superintendents are, of all men in the world, best able to judge whether in such cases the gravel has been disturbed, since that is a point to which their attention is constantly directed because of the danger encountered when an old working is intercepted. Besides, there is no evidence that the gravel anywhere under Table Mountain had ever been worked until modern mining operations began. The theory that it had been is in the highest degree improbable. Therefore it does not require an expert to decide whether an implement or fossil brought out from under Table Mountain is from undisturbed gravel. A workman can tell just as well as a scientific man whether an object came from the end of the tunnel or not; and if it did, that is all we need to know.

A second object exhibited by Mr. Becker was a pestle, with a communication from Mr. Clarence King, who had charge, some years ago, of the important geological survey of the fortieth parallel, and who was at one time general director of the United States Geological Survey. This pestle was found by Mr. King in 1869; and although it was not so far under Table Mountain as to establish the character of the gravel if it had been reported upon by an inexperienced observer, yet Mr. King is an expert whose judgment in such matters should be final, and this was that the gravel in which he found the object, though but slightly under the face of Table Mountain, must have lain in place ever since the lava came down and covered it. The third instance presented at this meeting was one brought to my own attention while visiting Sonora, last autumn, the circumstances of which it will be instructive to detail somewhat minutely.

Early in October, while waiting in the evening to obtain a team to drive from Sonora to the Yosemite Park, I chanced to meet Mr. C. McTarnahan, a young man acting as assistant surveyor of Tuolumne County. He had been invited to the hotel at my request, to give me information concerning the mining claims about Table Mountain, His knowledge respecting these was most definite and accurate, and perfectly at his command. On inquiring concerning the Valentine shaft, which I recalled as one in which Professor Whitney had reported archæological discoveries, the situation was immediately indicated to me; but on being asked if he had heard of those discoveries, he said that he had not. This, however, was not strange, since they were made before he was born, and he had not read Professor Whitney’s report. But he at once said that, three years ago, he had himself found a stone mortar in the Empire mine, which was in part owned by his father, and was on the opposite side of Table Mountain, about a mile from the Valentine shaft. Subsequently I visited the locality, and Mr. McTarnahan drew for me a plan of the mine, and indicated the exact place in the gravel from which the mortar was obtained. The tunnel was driven diagonally 748 feet through the rim of the ancient valley, down which the lava stream had flowed, and the old gravel was reached 175 feet from the western edge of the basalt cliff, and 100 or more feet below the surface of the flat top of Table Mountain. Any one visiting the grounds must readily see that here there could be no mistake, unless the witness had deliberately falsified. But that he was not falsifying is evident from the established character of the man, from the absence of any motive to deceive, and from certain incidental confirmations brought out by later inquiries. These last two points will appear in the further narrative.

Upon intimating a desire to see the mortar, I was at once informed that it was not to be obtained, since he had given it to Mrs. M. J. Darwin, of Santa Rosa (a town in a distant part of the State). After my return to the East I wrote to Mrs. Darwin, giving the circumstances as related by Mr. McTarnahan, and requesting photographs of the mortar. These I in due time received, they having been taken specially for my benefit; but, to my surprise, they were accompanied with the statement that she had never before heard that the mortar came from under Table Mountain, — that in fact she had not known anything about the place in which it had been found.

In answer to a second letter, asking for an account of the circumstances under which she obtained the object, Mrs. Darwin wrote that she was visiting in Sonora, and staying for a short time at the house of Mr. McTarnahan’s father, near the Empire mine ; that, upon occasion of visiting the mine with Mr. McTarnahan’s mother, she saw the mortar lying near the mouth of the tunnel, whereupon she expressed her surprise, saying that it was the first object of the kind she had ever seen which was not owned and prized by some one, adding that she should be glad to own one herself. Mrs. McTarnahan at once said, “ Put this in your trunk and take it home ; we have no use for it.” This was done, and nothing more was thought or said about it until interest was revived in the subject by my inquiries, three years later. All this agrees with what both Mr. Becker and Professor Whitney say, — that the miners are not on the lookout for such objects as these, and do not know their significance, or prize them enough to be under any temptation to make false statements respecting them. The accumulation of instances like this has now been so great that it will be difficult for the most skeptical to remain unconvinced.

The above account will prepare the reader, therefore, the more easily to credit the evidence supporting the genuineness of the celebrated Calaveras skull, which was found under this same lava flow, about twelve miles to the northeast, and somewhat farther up the slope of the mountain. To the detailed statement made by Professor Whitney my own recent visit to the locality enables me to add some important circumstantial confirmation. The facts are as follows: In February. 1866, Mr. Mattison, a blacksmith, living at Altaville, between the two mining camps known as Murphy’s and Angel’s, near the line between Calaveras and Tuolumne counties, was employing his spare earnings in running a mining shaft under that portion of the Sonora lava flow known as Bald Hill. He had penetrated the base of the hill with his tunnel until it was 150 feet below the surface, the intervening space being occupied by distinct strata of lava intercalated with thin beds of gravel, — the superincumbent lava being altogether nearly one hundred feet thick. Here, in connection with some petrified wood, Mr. Mattison found, thickly encased in cemented gravel, an object which he first thought was the root of a tree. But what he mistook for a root proved to be the lower jaw attached to the skull above referred to. Having brought the shapeless mass to the surface, and finding it of no value to himself, Mr. Mattison gave it to Mr. Scribner, who was then acting as agent for an express company, and who is still a prominent and highly respected business man in the neighborhood, living now at Angel’s. Mr. Scribner, on perceiving what it was, at once passed it into the hands of Dr. Jones, an intimate friend of his, living a few miles away, at Murphy’s. Dr. Jones now resides in San Francisco, and, like Mr. Scribner, is a gentleman of the highest reputation. Not having a very definite idea of the situation in which the relic had been found, Dr. Jones laid it aside in his yard, and paid little attention to it until the following June, when Mr. Mattison chanced to come to his office for a medical prescription. Recalling Mr. Mattison’s relation to the discovery, Dr. Jones questioned his patient as to the circumstances attending the discovery of the skull, and elicited the facts as above stated. Dr. Jones immediately communicated with Professor Whitney at San Francisco, and at his request forwarded the skull to him. As soon as was convenient Professor Whitney visited Altaville, and made a careful examination of the evidence, both as to the genuineness of the discovery and as to the geological conditions in which the skull was reported to have been found.

Not long after, Professor Whitney was permitted to take the skull with him, on his return home to Cambridge, where, in connection with Dr. Jeffries Wyman, he subjected it to a very careful investigation, to see if the relic itself confirmed the story told by the discoverer ; and this it did to such a degree that the circumstantial evidence alone places its genuineness beyond all reasonable question. According to this examination, the skull was in a fossilized condition, — that is, the phosphate of lime had been largely replaced by the carbonate of lime (as would not have been the case had it lain near the surface in loose gravel), — and evidently it had been exposed to considerable rough treatment while rolled along in the channel of the ancient stream.

It is to be regretted, in some respects, that the efforts of Dr. Wyman to determine the size and character and fossilized condition of the skull have removed from it the indications of genuineness and antiquity furnished by the incrustation of gravel which originally adhered to it. Mr. Dall, of Washington, who saw it, assures me that the evidence thus presented was of a most convincing character.

Such, in brief, is the evidence of the genuineness of the human relics reported as found under the lava of Sonora, Table Mountain, California. If it has failed heretofore to produce general conviction, this is due partly to the fact that it has not been known to the public in detail, and partly to the fact that the occupation of the Pacific coast by man at that early period was supposed to be out of harmony with the conditions generally thought to have existed at that time. Before remarking upon these conditions, however, a few words should be added concerning another discovery recently made, under circumstances somewhat similar to those in California, but in a locality several hundred miles distant. I refer to the so-called “ Nampa image.”

This is a skillfully formed miniature image of the human body, one inch and a half long, made from clay, and slightly burned, which was brought to my notice in October, 1889, by Mr. Charles Francis Adams, its genuineness being certified to by evidence that was perfectly satisfactory to him, all of which I have detailed in a communication to the Boston Society of Natural History, and which may be found in their Proceedings for January 1, 1890. During the past summer, also, I visited the locality, and found abundant confirmatory evidence.

The image in question was found about August 1, 1889, at Nampa, Ada County, Idaho, by Mr. M. A. Kurtz, who was engaged in sinking an Artesian well. The whole surface of the country here is covered with basaltic lava, which has poured out from a centre or vent thirty or forty miles to the east, but which at Nampa has pretty well thinned out, being there only fifteen feet thick, and disappearing entirely five miles farther west. Beneath the thin sheets of lava at this place, the well penetrated alternate layers of clay and quicksand to a depth of 320 feet, from which point the image was brought up by the sandpump. A general study of the region shows that this lava, like that in California, is geologically recent, since in both places it overlies late tertiary deposits. But the amount of erosion effected by streams subsequent to the volcanic eruption indicates in both cases an age which, as we reckon human history, is very great, though possibly it may fall considerably within a hundred thousand years.

Turning now to consider the conditions under which man existed at this early time upon the Pacific coast, we find them extremely interesting apart from their mere antiquity, and indicative of changes of a most striking order since man’s first occupation of the region. For one thing, the character of the vegetation was almost completely changed. The existing forests of the Pacific slope consist almost entirely of coniferous trees. The deciduous, or hardwood, trees familiar on the Atlantic coast are either entirely absent from the Pacific side of the continent, or are of smaller size and poorer quality. The Pacific coast has indeed maples, ashes, poplars, walnuts, oaks, and in Washington birches, but they all compare unfavorably with their brethren upon the Atlantic coast, and are so inferior in economic value that, as Professor Gray has said, “ a passable wagon wheel cannot be made of California wood, nor a really good one in Oregon.” But California has, at the present time, no birch, beech, elm, holly, gum-tree, magnolia, catalpa, mulberry, linden, or hickory. The flanks of the Sierra above the altitude of 2000 feet are covered with majestic but monotonous forests of pine, cedar, spruce, Sequoia gigantea, and tamarack, interspersed in the lower portion with inferior kinds of black oak and the diminutive California buckeye and manzanita.

But from the vegetable remains found associated with traces of man in the deposits under Table Mountain it would appear that, at the time of that volcanic outflow, there were no coniferous trees on the flanks of the Sierra, whereas many of the hard-wood trees above mentioned as now peculiar to the Atlantic States flourished there in abundance. Primeval man in California found shelter in forests very similar to those which, on the discovery of America by Columbus, covered the whole eastern part of the continent. The elm, the birch, the willow, the poplar, the sycamore, the gum-tree, the magnolia, and the maple spread for him their protecting branches, while the beech-tree, as well as the oak and the fig, added its fruit to his limited stock of vegetable food.

The animal companions of man upon the Pacific coast were also, in this early period, as different from the existing species as were the plants. From the remains of animals found associated with man in deposits beneath Table Mountain, or others equally old, we find that he was then as familiar with the unwieldy form and the long, curved tusk of the mammoth and the mastodon as the modern inhabitant of India or Africa now is with the reduced dimensions of the elephant ; cartloads of their fossil bones having been collected from the gold-bearing gravels, as might be inferred from Truthful James’s account of the Row upon the Stanislow. The llama, an ally to the camel, now confined to South America, was another companion of man in California at that time. The rhinoceros can scarcely be said to have been his companion, but from the remains discovered it could have been no unusual event for the hunter of those days to have encountered this animal in his haunts. Those were times, too, when beggars could have ridden on horseback, had they been able to domesticate any one of the several species of the horse which then abounded in the region. Extinct gigantic species of the cow and deer are also proved, by their remains, to have been then living in companionship with man ; while, as is to be expected, the wolf was present to worry and trouble him.

From still another point of view, the changes which have taken place since man became an inhabitant upon the Pacific coast appear enormous. The vast deposits of gold-bearing gravel upon the flanks of the Sierra Nevada, in which the remains of man are found, are referred for their origin to the climatic conditions accompanying the great ice age of North America. Glaciers, indeed, did not extend far down the sides of this range of mountains, since there are no signs upon them of the direct action of ice much below the level of 5000 feet. But the ice age was one of great precipitation all over North America, in which the rainfall and snowfall were far larger than at the present time, and in which evaporation was far less than now.

This climatic condition is clearly indicated by the great enlargement which took place at that time in the lakes of the vast interior basin stretching from the Sierra to the Wahsatch Mountains. The lakes now found in this area have no outlet, and are intensely salt; but under the influence of the climatic conditions causing the glacial period Great Salt Lake rose to a height of nearly 1000 feet above its present level, and became fresh, pouring its surplus waters northward through the Port Neuf into the Snake River. The various lakes in the western part of Nevada also increased in corresponding measure, becoming a single body of water, nearly 300 miles in length and 200 in width.

It is just such a climate as this, with its vast floods of water, which is required to explain the immense accumulations of gold-bearing gravel, already described, in which man’s remains have been found. No amount of time would cause such accumulations of gravel by the action of streams of the size they now show. But it may be necessary for us to suppose that there has been since that period a considerable elevation of the axis of the mountains, so that the slope of the sides is much greater than formerly. The slope now, however, is scarcely more than 100 feet to a mile, or three degrees, and the frequent earthquakes on the Pacific coast make it not at all improbable that the process of elevation is still going on. With the gentler slope of early times and the increased floods of the glacial period (fed towards the close by the melting glaciers near the summit), and with the watercourses but partially determined, we have exactly the conditions necessary to account for these immense gravel deposits, and therefore the conditions with which we may picture the human race to have been for a long time struggling.

At last there came upon the inhabitants of that region, both man and beast, the added disturbances of the vast volcanic eruptions which have covered so much of the surface with indestructible basalt; though we are not compelled to suppose in California any great direct destruction of plants and animals by these volcanic outbursts. The extinction of species was due rather to that general disturbance of the conditions of life brought about by this new element in the problem. But that a great extinction of plants and animals was indirectly occasioned is shown by the fact already adduced with reference to the complete change which has taken place in the character of the forests, and in large part of the species of animals occupying the region. Whether the race of men whose remains are found under Table Mountain became extinct with the horse, rhinoceros, and mammoth, or whether it migrated south with the llama, we may never know.

It cannot be denied that the character of man’s remains found beneath the lava beds of the Pacific slope is such as to indicate a being of no insignificant capacity, even though, so far as we can see, his actual development was but moderate. It is for this reason that so great hesitation has been manifested in giving credit to the evidence adduced. It is said that these remains are out of harmony with the other evidence we possess concerning the early condition of the human race. The mortars and pestles, which are the principal utensils found beneath Table Mountain, would be classed among the so-called smoothstone, or neolithic, implements, — such as in Europe are said to belong to a comparatively late period in the human occupation of that country, — while the Nampa image shows a high degree of skill in representing the human form. The Calaveras skull, too, is by no means of inferior type, but is capacious enough to have held the brain of a philosopher.

Our only answer to these general considerations is, that it is unsafe to apply a classification of facts relating to the human race in Europe to a region so distant and so peculiarly situated as the western coast of our own continent. As to the mortars, also, it is proper to observe that they are the most natural things in the world for rude people to invent. Even a savage would not be long in discovering that it is easier to pound his acorns in a hollow in the rock rather than on a flat surface, and it would be no great stroke of genius to discover that a portable stone with a hollow in it would often be of great convenience ; and when once introduced, the smoothing off of the corners and the making of it into a comely shape would be almost a matter of course. As Professor Putnam has suggested, also, some considerable skill in representing the human form is, both with children and with infant races, in the line of their earliest impulses and efforts. Consequently, we see no reason, in the nature of the case, why the evidence of man’s early occupation of the Pacific coast should be regarded with incredulity.

Palæontologists tell us that the extinct animals with which prehistoric man is associated in California are such as were existing in the pliocene, or latter portion of the tertiary epoch. Hence, if it is necessary to suppose a hard-and-fast line separating the tertiary epoch from the modern, we should have to say that these remains of man under Table Mountain relegate the beginnings of his history to the tertiary period. But it is not probable that these geological periods were everywhere sharply separated from each other. The tertiary doubtless gradually shaded off or dovetailed into the quaternary period ; and Mr. Becker has given us much reason to believe that ancient California was a kind of health resort for the lower animals, as in these last days it is for man, and that these tertiary animals, taking advantage of the conditions there favoring them, lingered far down into quaternary times. The mingling of their bones with those of men may indicate, therefore, not so much an extremely early date for man as an abnormally late date for the species of tertiary animals with which he was associated.

We can scarcely close this account without adding a word concerning the cause of the extensive outpourings of lava which have taken place west of the Rocky Mountains in such recent geological times. There can be no question that these enormous eruptions of basalt are correlated with the equally surprising facts connected with the glacial period, and, as we have seen, these two periods were doubtless closely contemporaneous in California. When now one fixes his attention upon the forces actually at work tending to disturb the equilibrium of the earth’s crust during the glacial period, he will see that it is by no means a baseless speculation which has suggested a causal connection between the accumulation of ice over British America and the vast eruption of lava at about the same time on the Pacific coast. As was stated at the outset, the region from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast belongs to the later geological eras, and has been subject to comparatively recent elevation. The Rocky and Sierra Nevada mountains doubtless mark lines of present weakness in the earth’s crust. It is by elevations along such lines of weakness that the gradually contracting sphere of the earth gets relief.

Now during the glacial period an area in North America of about 4,000,000 square miles, extending northward from a line connecting New York and St. Louis, was covered with ice to an average depth of probably three quarters of a mile, making, we may suppose, 3,000,000 cubic miles of ice. This ice represents the excess of the snowfall above the melting power of the sun over that region, and it was all first lifted up in vapor from the ocean. To produce a glacial mass of such dimensions, water enough was taken from the ocean to lower its level, the world over, one hundred feet. Thus we have the ocean beds relieved from an enormous amount of pressure, and the same amount concentrated upon the northern and central portions of the continent, while there never was glacial ice to any great extent west of the Missouri River and south of Puget Sound.

Thus, if the crust of the earth be as unstable as men of science believe it to be, and as, in fact, geologists show it to be, we can hardly resist the conviction that in the icy accumulations of the glacial period we have a cause which would, by its local pressure alone, lay open immense fissures along the lines of weakness west of the Rocky Mountains, and force out of them the liquid streams of lava which have produced such significant changes upon the Pacific coast. And so we are brought anew to admire the marvelous complications of the system of nature in which we have our being, and to acknowledge that we should hesitate long before declaring that anything anywhere is foreign to man.

George Frederick Wright.