Note XII-24 — Chapter XII · ANTIQUITIES OF THE NORTHWEST.

Two hand mills (mortars) taken from the bank of the Yuba River at a depth of 16 feet. 'They are all made from a peculiar kind of stone, which has the appearance of a combination of granite and burr-stone.' The pestles are usually of gneiss. Taylor, in Cal. Farmer, Dec. 14, 1860, May 9, 1862. At McGilvary's, Trinity Co., was discovered in 1856, 10 feet below the surface, 'an Indian skull encased in a sea shell, five by eight inches, inside of which were worked figures and representations, both singular and beautiful, inlaid with a material imperishable, resembling gold, which would not, in nice, ingenious workmanship, disgrace the sculptor's art of the present day.' San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Jan. 22, 1864, from Trinity Democrat, 1856. Slate tubes dug up near Oroville. Taylor, in Cal. Farmer, Nov. 2, 1860. A collar-bone taken from the gravel of the 'great blue lead' not less than 1000 feet below the forest-covered surface, in 1857. Hutchings' Cal. Mag., vol. ii., p. 417. Mammoth bones at Columbia, Stanislaus Co., 35 feet deep; and a hyena's tooth at Volcano, Amador Co., at a depth of 60 feet. Pioneer, vol. iii., p. 41. Some 30 different instances of the discovery of fossil remains by miners have been noted in the California papers since 1851. Cal. Farmer, May 23, 1862; also four well-known cases of giant human remains. Id., March 20, 1863. An immense block of porphyry whose sides and top are carved with rude mystic figures, in the Truckee Valley. 'I noticed one cluster of figures in a circle, having in its centre a rude representation of the sun, surrounded by about a dozen other figures, one of which exhibited a quite truthful representation of a crab, another like an anchor with a large ring, and still another representing an arrow passing through a ring.' Marysville Democrat, April, 1861, in Cal. Farmer, June 14, 1861.