76 Professor Henry A. Miers [Feb. 28, 



The hill-side gravel is a very remarkable deposit; it consists 

 almost entirely of boulders and pebbles of quartz and of sericite- 

 schist, and, when it is exposed to view, presents the appearance of a 

 uniform white ledge running horizontally along the hill-side at a 

 height of about 700 feet above the level of the Klondike River. It 

 sometimes attains a depth of 120 feet, and may be as much as half a 

 mile wide. The pebbles are to a large extent sub-angular and less 

 worn than those of the valley gravels. 



The early miners of course confined their attention to the valleys, 

 and the discovery of these rich deposits upon the hill-sides excited 

 great surprise; they now rival the valley gravel in importance. 

 The deposit is locally known as " white-wash " or the " White 

 Channel." 



The origin of the White Channel is shrouded in mystery ; it was 

 at first supposed to be a glacial deposit ; but there are no striations 

 or other sigus of glacial action, and it is now the opinion of the 

 local geologists that it was laid down by the sudden inrush of 

 tumultuous streams acting over a small area. The materials have 

 clearly not been transported far, and the gold is even more nuggety 

 and less worn than that of the valleys. 



One is naturally led to inquire whether all the gold of the lower 

 gravels was not brought down by streams cutting through the White 

 Channel which occupied the bed of the valleys when they were 

 broad and shallow, so that the White Channel may be the real source 

 of the gold. This view is supported by the fact just mentioned, that 

 the gold of the valleys is more worn than that of the hill-side, also 

 by the fact that the valleys are richer in their central portions, 

 which must have been covered by the White Channel, than in the 

 upper parts which are above the level of that deposit. 



Still there is no reason to doubt that the White Channel itself is 

 of local origin : its materials are those of the district, and have not 

 travelled far. (There are a few gravels in this area which consist of 

 pebbles foreign to the district, and they are not auriferous.) The 

 White Channel itself follows the present valley courses. On the 

 whole, therefore, although the origin of this peculiar deposit is 

 obscure, there can be no doubt, in my opinion, that the conclusion 

 forced upon us by a glance at the map is correct, and that the gold 

 has been derived from the limited area intersected by the auriferous 

 creeks which radiate from the Dome. 



Some of the gold adheres to quartz, which exactly resembles that 

 of the veins in the adjoining schists ; and it is fairly certain that 

 the metal came from quartz veins in the Klondike schists. 



On the other hand it is certainly most remarkable that so little 

 auriferous quartz has been found ; at the time of my visit hundreds 

 of quartz claims had been staked, but very few had been shown to 

 contain any gold whatever ; neither do the quartz boulders of the 

 White Channel appear to be auriferous, or even mineralised. And 

 yet it can hardly be doubted that where the valley gravels are rich in 



