260 Tertiary. 



benches and terraces, extend from the water to elevations of seven or 

 eight hundred feet. Somewhat similar sands and gravels are thinly 

 spread over many parts of the great prairie plateau, which stretches 

 eastward from the base of the mountains. A section of these, about 

 thirty feet thick, consisting of brown sand, and reddish rusty-looking 

 gravel in thin bands, is seen capping the steep hill of liorizontal Cre- 

 taceous shales and sandstones, which rises to an elevation of 550 feet 

 above the river, immediately in rear of the Hudson bay post at Dun- 

 vegan. In these high gravels the pebbles are small and pretty uniform 

 in size, in which respect they seem to differ from those of the lower 

 benches, which are much coarser; the small and large pebbles being 

 irregularly' distributed through them. These upper gravels can not well 

 be distinguished from those which, near Quesnel, occupy a position 

 immediately beneath the basaltic lava flows, and perhaps they belong 

 to the same epoch. 



George M. Dawson said that along the foot of the bank of the Fraser 

 river, in front of the town of Quesnel, a considerable thickness of the 

 lignite-bearing formation is shown. The lowest seen is situated about 

 a mile above the confluence of the Quesnel with the Fraser river, and 

 consists of impure lignites and clays, with layers of soft sandstone and 

 ironstone concretions. These are followed in ascending order by clays 

 and arenaceous clays of pale-gra^'ish, greenish and yellowish tints, 

 with a general southward or southwestward dip at low angles. These 

 fill the trough of a shallow synclinal over which the town of Quesnel 

 stands. On the south bank of the Quesnel river, the impure lignites 

 and associated beds rise again to the surface, and in some sections of 

 15 or 20 feet, the lignite may constitute l-6th of the whole. It is not, 

 however, in well-defined beds, but interstratified throughout with cla3's 

 and appears to have been deposited in the form of drift-wood by some- 

 what rapidly flowing water, and is not so pure as to be of any economic 

 importance. Small spots and drops of amber are abundant in some 

 layers. Half a mile below the mouth of the Quesnel river, on the oast 

 bank of the Fraser, a cliff exposes about 100 feet in thickness of this 

 lignitiferous group. The plants, from the Quesnel beds, and also from 

 the ligaitiferous beds on the Blackwater, are to a great extent identical 

 with those described by Prof. Heer from the "Miocene" of Alaska, 

 though the age of these beds may be and probably is older than the 

 Miocene. 



The basaltic series, consisting of several or many horizontal or over- 

 lapping flows, with the exception of those areas of older rocks protru- 



