[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.
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