MARINE REMAINS.
The hills around Monterey are full of marine shells. You can turn them out wherever you drive your spade into the ground. The Indians dig and burn them for lime, which is used in whitewashing the adobe walls of houses, and which makes them glimmer in the sun like banks of freshly-driven snow. It has not sufficient strength for the mason, but no other was in use when we landed at Monterey. The first regular lime-kiln was burnt by me for the town-hall I found the stone about ten miles from Monterey, and the lime it produced of a superior quality. When the lime, hair, lath, and sand were brought together, no little curiosity was awakened by the heterogeneous mass, and the admiration was equally apparent when each took its place and performed its part in the plaster and hard finish of the wall and ceiling. Thousands came to see the work; it was the lion of the day. But the curiosity of the geologist would turn from this to the fossil oyster-shells in the hills; and when he has exhausted those on the coast, let him turn inland, and he will find on the mountains, two hundred miles from the sea, and on elevations of a thousand feet, the same marine productions; and not only these, but the skeleton of a whale almost entire. How came that monster up there, high and dry, glimmering like the pale skeleton of a huge cloud between us and the moon? Did the central fire which threw up the mountain ridge, throw him up on its crest? How astonished he must have been to find himself up there, blowing off steam among volcanoes and comets! Now let our savans quit their cockle-shells and petrified herring, and tell us about that whale. They will find him near the rancho of Robert Livermore, on a mountain which overlooks the great valley of the San Joaquin. There he reposes in grim majesty, while the winds of ages pour through his bleaching bones their hollow dirge.