No. 4.] SELWYN — THE NORTH-WEST TERRITORY. 209 



I washed out a few minute specks of gold from the gravel in tlie 

 bed of the river, small red garnets and magnetic iron sand, con- 

 stituting the bulk of the residue in thepannings. It would thus 

 appear that the gold of she Saskatchewan has not been derived 

 troiu the mountains at its source, but from the drifts composed 

 of granitoid gneiss, or hornblendic and micaceous schist, which 

 are spread over the face of the country, and which must them- 

 selves have been in a great put derived from the denudation of 

 the great belt of Laurentian and (Hher crystalline rocks which' 

 extends from Lake Superior, north-westerly to the Arctic sea. 

 Numerous fragments and large pieces of silicified wood are fre- 

 quently met with along the shore of the river, derived from the 

 Tertiary and Cretaceous rocks. Tn the banks of Red Deer River, 

 Dr. Hector observed a bed of this silicified wood in which there were 

 «ilicitied roots eighteen inches in diameter. I did not see any of 

 it in aitii, but loose specimens of these fossil woods have been 

 collected by Mr. Bell, Mr. George Dawson and myself from 

 widely separated regions, and it will be both interesting and im- 

 portant to know how far those from the North Saskatchewan 

 correspond with those from the plains further to the south and 

 with other recent and fossil woods from the western side of the 

 Rocky Mountains. 



Dr. Dawson has already examined and compared some of the 

 specimens referred to, and will doubtless be able to give some in- 

 teresting information about them, but larger and more perfect 

 collections will be required. From the Rocky Mountain House 

 to Edmonton, and thence to a short distmce below Victoria 

 there are numerous fair exposures of the strata at comparatively 

 short intervals along the river ; soft, friable, green, grey and brown, 

 concretionary sands-tones, alternating with blue and grey, arena- 

 ceous and argillaceous shales, and layers and beds of lignite and 

 bright, jet like brown-coal are the prevailing features in these ex- 

 posures. In the shales, there are layers of nodules, or septaria, of 

 clay iron ore holding numerous fragments of plants and containing 

 an average of 34.98 per cent, of iron. At one place on the right 

 bank of the river, about 40 miles below the confluence of the 

 Brazeau, I found a seam of this jet-like coal which measured from 

 18 to 20 feet thick, in two exposures, rather more than four 

 miles apart. In the first exposure which extends some 50 or 60 

 yards in length, but which, owing to the swiftness of the current 

 running at its base, is not easily examined, the seam is almost 

 Vol. VI r. o No. 4. 



