324 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON'S ADDRESS— AMERICA. [May 23, 1859. 



of California. Thus, as in the latter the ore has not yet been found 

 in the coast-range which bounds the Pacific, but sets on at Fort 

 Yale on the Eiver Frazer, in long. 121^° — extending northwards 

 from 50° to beyond 51° North lat., the gold detritus has been found 

 to ramify largely to the E. and N.E., along the various affluents of 

 the Frazer; the Anderson, Thompson,* and various smaller streams, 

 being found charged with golden debris. Specimens of gold from 

 different parts of the region having been recently presented to the 

 Museum of Practical Geology by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, I am 

 led to infer that the original sites or quartz reefs in the slaty rocks, 

 whence all this detrital matter has doubtless been derived, are 

 ridges which lie in the N.N.W. prolongation of the auriferous 

 ridges of California, and are separated from the Eocky Mountains 

 on the east, and from the coast-ridges of the Pacific on the west. At 

 present it is impossible to conjecture, with any approach to accu- 

 racy, what may be the probable length of this auriferous region ; 

 but there is every reason to think that it may extend far to the 

 N.N.W. ; so that the Emperor of Russia may possibly possess in his 

 distant North American dominions a Dorado as well as in his own 

 Ural Mountains. Again, even restricting our inquiry to the auri- 

 ferous tract of British Columbia, we as yet know little or nothing 

 of its breadth. It has been, indeed, said that gold has been detected 

 on the eastern shore of the great Okanagan Lake, in E. long. 119°, 

 a statement which seems by no means improbable, seeing that the 

 precious metal has been found as far eastward in the United States 

 as Fort Colville on the Columbia. 



This brief allusion to the want of knowledge respecting the 

 eastern extension of the gold fields of British Columbia may lead us 

 to hope that Dr. Hector, the geologist and naturalist, who is even 

 now about to traverse these tracts, will bring us home accounts 

 which will, to a great extent, dispel our ignorance. He will, at all 

 events, offer to us for the first time a true account of the lithological 

 character of the Rocky Mountains, as distinguished from the au- 

 riferous chains on the West ; and when his accounts are combined 

 with those of Mr. Bauermann, the geologist of the Boundary Survey 

 conducted by Colonel Hawkins, and these are co-ordinated with the 

 data obtained by Palliser in more northern parallels, we shall, indeed, 



♦ The Duke of Newcastle, now Colonial Secretary, has just deposited in the Museum of 

 Practical Geology a nugget from the head waters of the Thompson River, weighing nearly 

 8 oz.— July 12, 1859. 



