They crowded into the boats kept on the Oakland shores for such emergencies, but in their half-famished condition they made poor headway against the choppy sea.
Akaza went back over much of the same ground traversed in visiting the Yo-Semite Valley. Where possible, he went due east, facing the rising place of the sun. A less stout heart would have been appalled by the devastation and ruin all around him.
The rivers in many places had been lifted out of their courses, and changed about in an almost incomprehensible manner. Mountains and forests no longer afforded shelter to the huge animals of that time.
On his way into Calaveras County, Akaza saw herds of mastodons with their tongues lolled out, in company with elephants and elk huddled together around a spring of fresh water.
He encountered many a fierce grizzly bear so nearly famished as to be unable to harm him. Wolves and panthers were dead and dying by the hundreds, and the rhinoceros and hippopotami had great raw cracks in their backs because of the extreme heat and the dryness of the atmosphere.
No tongue can picture the thrilling and inspiring condition of the heavens. The mountain peaks continued to send up streams of hot air, which mingling with the cool breezes from the sea, brought about gales and storms of incalculable velocity, with all the drying capacity of a furnace blast. The upper air was an amphitheater of gorgeous electric effects. Streaks of lightning as big as the body of a tree licked out their long tongues, or darted with deadly effect among the ashes and smoke, which rolled in and out over the crest of the Sierras, scattering a sediment broadcast for miles. The heavy cannonading of the upper strata of air could never be compared to the weak peals and crashes of a thunderstorm, and yet not a drop of water fell to ease the sufferings of the creatures who still lived.
“Yermah’s prayers have been answered literally,” said the old man, as he trudged along, upheld by some hidden force—carried forward by an indomitable purpose. “The gold is being vaporized and brought to the surface in the upheaved quartz and gravel. It has tried to come south toward him, but it cannot escape the rigors of the ice, soon to overtop this region.”
He passed close to the great “mother lode,” and not far from the mysterious “blue lead,” the wonder and admiration of our pioneer days. But there was no detritus then, no decomposed quartz, no auriferous gravel-beds.
“There will be no faults in these veins,” he said, “because the uplifting is simultaneous. And in aftertime the deposits will be accessible to another race of men. They will find our copper mines, but will lose the secret of amalgamation. The first overflow of mud and water has hardened into cement,” he continued, examining the deposit critically.
“It is indeed time I were here. Rivers of basaltic lava will follow this, and I must be prepared. Four successive strata will pour over me, and still my grinning skull will be preserved to confound and astonish. The very name of the monastery, Guatavita, the Gate of Life, will incite men to deeds of blood. But thy will be done! I thank Thee that Thou hast given me the power to endure.”