At Blanket Creek, near Sonora, stone relics and bones of the mastodon were found together in 1855.[XII-15] Wood's Creek was another locality where stone relics with fossil bones, including those of the tapir, are reported to have been dug out at a depth of twenty to forty feet. The mortar and pestle shown in the cut is one of many stone implements found, with fossil bones, at Gold Springs Gulch, in 1863, at a depth of sixteen feet in auriferous gravel, like the most of such relics. It is twelve and a half inches in diameter, weighs thirty pounds, and holds about two quarts. The cross-lines pecked in on the sides with some sharp instrument, are of rare occurrence if not unique. Among the other implements found here, are what Mr Voy describes as "discoidal stones, or perhaps spinal whorls. They are from three to four inches in diameter, and about an inch and a half thick, both sides being concave, with centre perforated. It has been suggested that these stones were used in certain hurling games." They are of granite and hard sandstone. The author has heard of similar relics in Ohio, Denmark, and Chili. Another relic, found at the same place in 1862, with the usual bones under twenty to thirty feet of calcareous tufa, is a flat oval dish of granite, eighteen inches and a half in diameter, two or three inches thick, and weighing forty pounds. It is shown in the cut, and, like the preceding, is preserved in Mr Voy's cabinet, now at the University of California. Texas Flat was another locality where fossil bones were found with fresh-water shells.[XII-16]
CALAVERAS COUNTY.
Calaveras County has also yielded many interesting relics of a past age, of the same nature as those described in Tuolumne.[XII-17] The famous 'Calaveras skull' was taken from a mining shaft at Altaville, at a depth of one hundred and thirty feet beneath seven strata of lava and gravel.[XII-18] The evidence was sufficient to convince Prof. Whitney and other scientific men that this skull was actually found as claimed, although on the other hand some doubt and not a little ridicule have been expressed about the subject. Many stone mortars and mastodon-bones have been found about Altaville and Murphy's, but not under lava.[XII-19]
At San Andrés, in 1864, according to sworn statements in Mr Voy's possession, large stone mortars were taken from a layer of cemented gravel six feet thick, lying under the following strata:—coarse sedimentary volcanic material, five feet; sand and gravel, one hundred feet; brownish volcanic ash, three feet; cemented sand, four feet; blueish volcanic sand, fifteen feet. At the Chili Gulch, near Mokelumne Hill, the skull of a rhinoceros is reported to have been found in 1863.[XII-20]
STONE HAMMERS.
Mortar from Shingle Springs.