eccentric. I notice everything, and
gather beetles and snakes and anything that's queer; and so some don't
like me, and call me eccentric. I'm always trying to find out things.
Now, there's a weed; the Indians eat it for greens. What do you call
those long-bodied flies with big heads?" "Dragon-flies," I suggested.
"Well, their jaws work sidewise, instead of up and down, and
grasshoppers' jaws work the same way, and therefore I think they are the
same species. I always notice everything like that, and just because I
do, they say I'm eccentric," etc.

Anxious that I should miss none of the wonders of their old gold-field,
the good people had much to say about the marvelous beauty of Cave City
Cave, and advised me to explore it. This I was very glad to do, and
finding a guide who knew the way to the mouth of it, I set out from
Murphy the next morning.

The most beautiful and extensive of the mountain caves of California
occur in a belt of metamorphic limestone that is pretty generally
developed along the western flank of the Sierra from the McCloud River
on the north to the Kaweah on the south, a distance of over 400 miles,
at an elevation of from 2000 to 7000 feet above the sea. Besides this
regular belt of caves, the California landscapes are diversified by long
imposing ranks of sea-caves, rugged and variable in architecture, carved
in the coast headlands and precipices by centuries of wave-dashing; and
innumerable lava-caves, great and small, originating in the unequal
flowing and hardening of the lava sheets in which they occur, fine
illustrations of which are presented in the famous Modoc Lava Beds, and
around the base of icy Shasta. In this comprehensive glance we may also
notice the shallow wind-worn caves in stratified sandstones along the
margins of the plains; and the cave-like recesses in the Sierra slates
and granites, where bears and other mountaineers find shelter during the
fall of sudden storms. In general, however, the grand massive uplift of
the Sierra, as far as it has been laid-bare to observation, is about as
solid and caveless as a boulder.

Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very
abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps
prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing,
therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the
sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or
in balloons, o