Another testimony to the destruction that took place, evidences of which still remain, is given in the following extract from the San Francisco Herald:

"Captain Walker assures us that the country from the Colorado to the Rio Grande, between the Gila and San Juan, is full of ruined habitations and cities, most of which are on the table-land. . . . On that occasion he had penetrated about midway from the Colorado into the wilderness, and had encamped near the Little Red River, with the Sierra Blanca looming up to the south, when he noticed at a little distance, an object that induced him to examine further. As he approached, he found it to be a kind of citadel, around which lay the ruins of a city more than a mile in length. It was located on a gentle declivity that sloped towards Red River, and the lines of the streets could be distinctly traced, running regularly at right angles with each other. The houses had all been built of stone, but all had been reduced to ruins by the action of some great heat, which had evidently passed over the whole country. It was not an ordinary conflagration, but must have been some fierce, furnace-like blast of fire, similar to that issuing from a volcano, as the stones were all burnt—some of them almost cindered, others glazed as if melted. This appearance was visible in every ruin he met with. A storm of fire seemed to have swept over the whole face of the country, and the inhabitants must have fallen before it. In the centre of this city we refer to rose abruptly a rock of 20 or 30 feet high, upon the top of which stood a portion of the walls of what had once been an immense building. The outline of the building was still distinct. . . . All the south end of the building seemed to have been burnt to cinders and to have sunk to a mere pile of rubbish. Even the rock on which it was built appeared to have been partially fused by the heat."

REMAINS FOUND UNDER LAVA BEDS.

In an article which appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin several years ago, Dr. D. L. Yates, says:

"It was said that California possesses some of the oldest known relics on the continent. The first authenticated record of the original occupants was found on the Table Mountain region in Tuolumne County, and is of an age prior to the great volcanic outburst. Fossil remains of the rhinoceros and an extinct horse are found under the lava layers forming the Table Mountains, which are 1,400 feet thick, 1,700 feet wide and many hundreds of feet high, where the river beds have been washed out and have been covered again to the depth of from three thousand to four thousand feet more since the flow of the lava. This lava rests on a bed of detritus, which is often entered by running tunnels. The human relics and stone implements found in these formations give evidence of human habitants differing from any known since. There have been found spear heads, a pipe of polished stone, two scoops of steleitic rock (resembling the grocer's scoop), an implement of aragonite, resembling an unbent bow, but the use of which is unknown and cannot be conjectured, a stone needle, with notches at the larger end, and the finest charmstones that have ever been found.

"There have been brought to light the fossils of nine mastodons, twenty elephants, various pachyderms in the Table Mountains, numerous evidences of animal life in the calcareous formations in the Texas flats, obsidian spear heads, fossils of the elephant, horse and camel about Hornites, bones and evidences of pre-historic human industry in Tulare, and in Trinity and Siskiyou many proofs of the contemporaneous existence of man and extinct mammals."

DISCOVERY OF A HIDDEN CITY.

The Philadelphia Record, z, few years ago published the following despatch from Fort Davis, Texas:

"A strange discovery has been lately made by a surveying party of the Kansas City, El Paso and Mexico Railroad, at a point in Southern Mexico, not very far from Las Cruces. Here, amid a tremendous lava flow, a veritable sea of obsidian or black glass, a hidden city has been discovered. . . .

"The obsidian, molten or black glass at the moment of cooling evidently became agitated, for it now lies in ragged waves and billows of fantastic shape, some of the ridges from twelve to fourteen feet high and capped like the sea waves with a combing crest of greenish white. The action of the winds and elements have literally burned some parts of this region into powdered dust.

"At the northern extremity, where the unknown city lies partly uncovered, the ruins of gigantic stone buildings peer forth into the light of day. Some of these buildings are simply tremendous. . . .

"The whirlwind and sand augers have scooped out the dust, and thus exposed the city. No legend or story exists to show how or when it was founded, or whether it was abandoned or destroyed. The latter seems most likely, and probably, too by an earthquake, at some remote period which threw the lava and fire up. No volcano is known to exist in the neighborhood."

EVIDENCES OF GREAT ERUPTIONS.

Many discoveries have been made that give evidence of great eruptions in America. The San Francisco Herald stated some years ago that Mr. Butterfield, in running a tunnel in Table Mountain, near Sonora, California, found a trunk of a large pine tree, one hundred and ten feet from the surface of the ground.