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MURPHY'S CAMP is a curious
old mining- town in Calaveras County, at an elevation of twenty-four hundred
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
chocked 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. Many of
the hills of the ancient landscapes have become hollows, and the old hollows
have become hills. Therefore the fragmentary channels, with their loads of
auriferous gravel, occur in all kinds of unthought-of places, trending
obliquely, or even at right angles to the present drainage, across the tops
of lofty ridges or far beneath them, presenting impressive illustrations of
the magnitude of the changes accomplished since those ancient streams were
annihilated. The last volcanic period preceding the regeneration of the
Sierra landscapes seems to have come on over all the range almost
simultaneously, like the glacial period, notwithstanding lavas of different
age occur together in many places, indicating numerous periods of activity
in the Sierra fire fountains. The most important of the ancient
river-channels in this region is a section that extends from the south side
of the town beneath Coyote Creek and the ridge beyond it to the Caņon of the
Stanislaus; but on account of its depth below the general surface of the
present valleys the rich gold gravels it is known to contain cannot be
easily worked on a large scale. Their extraordinary richness may be inferred
from the fact that many claims were profitably worked in them by sinking
shafts to a depth of two hundred feet or more, and hoisting the dirt by a
windlass. Should the dip of this ancient channel be such as to make the
Stanislaus Caņon available as a dump, then the grand deposit might be worked
by the hydraulic method, and although a long, expensive tunnel would be
required, the scheme might still prove profitable, for there is "millions in
it."
The importance of these
ancient gravels as gold fountains is well known to miners. Even the
superficial placers of the present streams have derived much of their gold
from them. According to all accounts, the Murphy placers have been very rich
- "terrific rich," as they say here. The hills have been cut and scalped,
and every gorge and gulch and valley torn to pieces and disemboweled,
expressing a fierce and desperate energy hard to understand. Still, any kind
of effort-making is better than inaction, and there is something sublime in
seeing men working in dead earnest at anything, pursuing an object with
glacier-like energy and persistence. Many a brave fellow has recorded a most
eventful chapter of life on these Calaveras rocks. But most of the pioneer
miners are sleeping now, their wild day done, while the few survivors linger
languidly in the washed-out gulches or sleepy village like harried bees
around the ruins of their hive. "We have no industry left now," they told
me, "and no men; everybody and everything hereabouts has gone to decay. We
are only bummers - out of the game, a thin scattering of poor, dilapidated
cusses, compared with what we used to be in the grand old gold days. We were
giants then, and you can look around here and see our tracks." But although
these lingering pioneers are perhaps more exhausted than the mines, and
about as dead as the dead rivers, they are yet a rare and interesting set of
men, with much gold mixed with the rough, rocky gravel of their characters;
and they manifest a breeding and intelligence little looked for in such
surroundings as theirs. As the heavy, long- continued grinding of the
glaciers brought out the features of the Sierra, so the intense experiences
of the gold period have brought out the features of these old miners,
forming a richness and variety of character little known as yet. The
sketches of Bret Harte, Hayes, and Miller have not exhausted this field by
any means. It is interesting to note the extremes possible in one and the
same character: harshness and gentleness, manliness and childishness, apathy
and fierce endeavor. Men who, twenty years ago, would not cease their
shoveling to save their Eves, now play in the streets with children. Their
long, Micawber-like waiting after the exhaustion of the placers has brought
on an exaggerated form of dotage. I heard a group of brawny pioneers in the
street eagerly discussing the quantity of tail needed for a boy's kite; and
one graybeard undertook the sport of flying it, volunteering the information
that he was a boy, "always was a boy, and d-n a man who was not a boy
inside, however ancient outside!" Mines, morals, politics, the immortality
of the soul, etc., were discussed beneath shade trees and in saloons, the
time for each being governed apparently by the temperature. Contact with
Nature, and the habits of observation acquired in gold-seeking, had made
them all, to some extent, collectors, and, like wood rats, they had gathered
all kinds of odd specimens into their cabins, and now required me to examine
them. They were themselves the oddest and most interesting specimens. One of
them offered to show me around the old diggings, giving me fair warning
before setting out that I might not like him, "bectuse," said he, "people
say I'm 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?"
"Dragonflies," 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 four hundred miles, at an elevation of from two to seven
thousand 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, or even to creep like worms into dark
holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going
on in those out-of-the- way places, but to see better what the sun sees on
our return to common everyday beauty.
Our way from Murphy's to the
cave lay across a series of picturesque, moory ridges in the chaparral
region between the brown foothills and the forests, a flowery stretch of
rolling hill waves breaking here and there into a kind of rocky foam on the
higher summits, and sinking into delightful bosky hollows embowered with
vines. The day was a fine specimen of California summer, pure sunshine,
unshaded most of the time by a single cloud. As the sun rose higher, the
heated air began to flow in tremulous waves from every southern slope. The
sea breeze that usually comes up the foothills at this season, with cooling
on its wings, was scarcely perceptible. The birds were assembled beneath
leafy shade, or made short, languid flights in search of food, all save the
majestic buzzard; with broad wings outspread he sailed the warm air
unwearily from ridge to ridge, seeming to enjoy the fervid sunshine like a
butterfly. Squirrels, too, whose spicy ardor no heat or cold may abate, were
nutting among the pines, and the innumerable hosts of the insect kingdom
were throbbing and wavering unwearied as sunbeams.
This brushy, berry-bearing
region used to be a deer and bear pasture, but since the disturbances of the
gold period these fine animals have almost wholly disappeared. Here, also,
once roamed the mastodon and elephant, whose bones are found entombed in the
river gravels and beneath thick folds of lava. Toward noon, as we were
riding slowly over bank and brae, basking in the unfeverish sun-heat, we
witnessed the upheaval of a new mountain range, a Sierra of clouds abounding
in landscapes as truly sublime and beautiful - if only we have a mind to
think so and eyes to see - as the more ancient rocky Sierra beneath it, with
its forests and waterfalls; reminding us that, as there is a lower world of
caves, so, also, there is an upper world of clouds. Huge, bossy cumuli
developed with astonishing rapidity from mere buds, swelling with visible
motion into colossal mountains, and piling higher, higher, in long massive
ranges, peak beyond peak, dome over dome, with many a picturesque valley and
shadowy cave between; while the dark firs and pines of the upper benches of
the Sierra were projected against their pearl bosses with exquisite
clearness of outline. These cloud mountains vanished in the azure as quickly
as they were developed, leaving no detritus; but they were not a whit less
real or interesting on this account.
The more enduring hills over
which we rode were vanishing as surely as they, only not so fast, a
difference which is great or small according to the standpoint from which it
is contemplated.
At the bottom of every deli
we found little homesteads embosomed in wild brush and vines wherever the
recession of the hills left patches of arable ground. These secluded flats
are settled mostly by Italians and Germans, who plant a few vegetables and
grapevines at odd times, while their main business is mining and
prospecting. In spite of all the natural beauty of these deli cabins, they
can hardly be called homes. They are only a better kind of camp, gladly
abandoned whenever the hoped-for gold harvest has been gathered. There is an
air of profound unrest and melancholy about the best of them. Their beauty
is thrust upon them by exuberant Nature, apart from which they are only a
few logs and boards rudely jointed and without ceiling or floor, a rough
fireplace with corresponding cooking utensils, a shelf-bed, and stool. The
ground about them is strewn with battered prospecting-pans, picks,
sluice-boxes, and quartz specimens from many a ledge, indicating the trend
of their owners' hard lives.
The ride from Murphy's to the
cave is scarcely two hours long, but we lingered among quartz ledges and
banks of dead river gravel until long after noon. At length emerging from a
narrow-throated gorge, a small house came in sight set in a thicket of fig
trees at the base of a limestone hill. "That," said my guide, pointing to
the house, "is Cave City, and the cave is in that gray hill." Arriving at
the one house of this one-house city, we were boisterously welcomed by three
drunken men who had come to town to hold a spree. The mistress of the house
tried to keep order, and in reply to our inquiries told us that the cave
guide was then in the cave with a party of ladies. "And must we wait until
he returns?" we asked. No, that was unnecessary; we might take candles and
go into the cave alone, provided we shouted from time to time so as to be
found by the guide, and were careful not to fall over the rocks or into the
dark pools. Accordingly, taking a trail from the house, we were led around
the base of the hill to the mouth of the cave, a small inconspicuous
archway, mossy around the edges and shaped like the door of a water-ouzel's
nest, with no appreciable hint or advertisement of the grandeur of the many
crystal chambers within. Lighting our candles, which seemed to have no
illuminating power in the thick darkness, we groped our way onward as best
we could along narrow lanes and alleys, from chamber to chamber, around
rustic columns and heaps of fallen rocks, stopping to rest now and then in
particularly beautiful places - fairy alcoves furnished with admirable
variety of shelves and tables, and round bossy stools covered with sparkling
crystals. Some of the corridors were muddy, and in plodding along these we
seemed to be in the streets of some prairie village in spring time. Then we
would come to handsome marble stairways conducting right and left into upper
chambers ranged above one another three or four stories high, floors,
ceilings, and walls lavishly decorated with innumerable crystalline forms.
After thus wandering exploringly, and alone for a mile or so, fairly
enchanted, a murmur of voices and a gleam of light betrayed the approach of
the guide and his party, from whom, when they came up, we received a most
hearty and natural stare, as we stood half- concealed in a side recess among
stalagmites. I ventured to ask the dripping, crouching company how they had
enjoyed their saunter, anxious to learn how the strange sunless scenery of
the underworld had impressed them. "Ah, it's nice! It's splendid!" they all
replied and echoed. "The Bridal Chamber back here is just glorious! This
morning we came down from the Calaveras Big Tree Grove, and the trees are
nothing to it." After making this curious comparison, they hastened sunward,
the guide promising to join us shortly on the bank of a deep pool, where we
were to wait for him. This is a charming little lakelet of unknown depth,
never yet stirred by a breeze, and its eternal calm excites the imagination
even more profoundly than the silvery lakes of the glaciers rimmed with
meadows and snow and reflecting sublime mountains.
Our guide, a jolly,
rollicking Italian, led us into the heart of the hill, up and down, right
and left, from chamber to chamber more and more magnificent, all aglitter
like a glacier cave with icicle-like stalactites and stalagmites combined in
forms of indescribable beauty. We were shown one large room that was
occasionally used as a dancing-hall; another that was used as a chapel, with
natural pulpit and crosses and pews, sermons in every stone, where a priest
had said mass. Mass-saying is not so generally developed in connection with
natural wonders as dancing. One of the first conceits excited by the giant
sequoias was to cut one of them down and dance on its stump. We have also
seen dancing in the spray of Niagara; dancing in the famous Bower Cave above
Coulterville; and nowhere have I seen so much dancing as in Yosemite. A
dance on the inaccessible South Dome would likely follow the making of an
easy way to the top of it.
It was delightful to witness
here the infinite deliberation of Nature, and the simplicity of her methods
in the production of such mighty results, such perfect repose combined with
restless enthusiastic energy. Though cold and bloodless as a landscape of
polar ice, building was going on in the dark with incessant activity. The
archways and ceilings were everywhere hung with down-growing crystals, like
inverted groves of leafless saplings, some of them large, others delicately
attenuated, each tipped with a single drop of water, like the terminal bud
of a pine tree. The only appreciable sounds were the dripping and tinkling
of water falling into pools or faintly plashing on the crystal floors.
In some places the crystal
decorations are arranged in graceful flowing folds deeply plicated like
stiff silken drapery. In others straight lines of the ordinary stalactite
forms are combined with reference to size and tone in a regularly graduated
system like the strings of a harp with musical tones corresponding thereto;
and on these stone harps we played by striking the crystal strings with a
stick. The delicious liquid tones they gave forth seemed perfectly divine as
they sweetly whispered and wavered through the majestic halls and died away
in faintest cadence, - the music of fairyland. Here we lingered and reveled,
rejoicing to find so much music in stony silence, so much splendor in
darkness, so many mansions in the depths of the mountains, buildings ever in
process of construction, yet ever finished, developing from perfection to
perfection, profusion without overabundance; every particle visible or
invisible in glorious motion, marching to the music of the spheres in a
region regarded as the abode of eternal stillness and death.
The outer chambers of
mountain caves are frequently selected as homes by wild beasts. In the
Sierra, however, they seem to prefer homes and hiding-places in chaparral
and beneath shelving precipices, as I have never seen their tracks in any of
the caves. This is the more remarkable because notwithstanding the darkness
and oozing water there is nothing uncomfortably cellar-like or sepulchral
about them.
When we emerged into the
bright landscapes of the sun everything looked brighter, and we felt our
faith in Nature's beauty strengthened, and saw more clearly that beauty is
universal and immortal, above, beneath, on land and sea, mountain and plain,
in heat and cold, light and darkness. |
