but even from him our brave
mountain-dweller has little to fear in the remote solitudes of the High
Sierra. The golden plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin were lately
thronged with bands of elk and antelope, but, being fertile and
accessible, they were required for human pastures. So, also, are many of
the feeding-grounds of the deer--hill, valley, forest, and meadow--but
it will be long before man will care to take the highland castles of the
sheep. And when we consider here how rapidly entire species of noble
animals, such as the elk, moose, and buffalo, are being pushed to the
very verge of extinction, all lovers of wildness will rejoice with me in
the rocky security of _Ovis montana_, the bravest of all the Sierra
mountaineers.

[1] Pacific Railroad Survey, Vol. VIII, page 678.

[2] Audubon and Bachman's "Quadrupeds of North America."

CHAPTER XV

IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS

Murphy's camp is a curious old mining-town in Calaveras County, at an
elevation of 2400 feet above the sea, situated like a nest in the center
of a rough, gravelly region, rich in gold. Granites, slates, lavas,
limestone, iron ores, quartz veins, auriferous gravels, remnants of dead
fire-rivers and dead water-rivers are developed here side by side within
a radius of a few miles, and placed invitingly open before the student
like a book, while the people and the region beyond the camp furnish
mines of study of never-failing interest and variety.

When I discovered this curious place, I was tracing the channels of the
ancient pre-glacial rivers, instructive sections of which have been laid
bare here and in the adjacent regions by the miners. Rivers, according
to the poets, "go on forever"; but those of the Sierra are young as yet
and have scarcely learned the way down to the sea; while at least one
generation of them have died and vanished together with most of the
basins they drained. All that remains of them to tell their history is a
series of interrupted fragments of channels, mostly choked with gravel,
and buried beneath broad, thick sheets of lava. These are known as the
"Dead Rivers of California," and the gravel deposited in them is
comprehensively called the "Blue Lead." In some places the channels of
the present rivers trend in the same direction, or nearly so, as those
of the ancient rivers; but, in general, there is little correspondence
between them, the entire drainage having been changed, or, rather, made
new. M