288 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION C. 



Klondike rocks, the vein quartz, being the most resistant both as to 

 decay and grinding down, has survived in fraginental form in much 

 greater proportions than the country rocks that originally contained 

 it, and it is now represented by heavy beds of shingle and gravel, 

 which have received the nanie of the White Channel gravels, and these 

 are found in great quantities at different levels in various parts of the 

 district. Although these gravels look white in bulk, as compared with 

 other gravels, yet about half of the individual stones are not quartz, 

 but consist of rounded fragments of the harder and tougher kinds of 

 the country rocks in the vicinity. The deeply disintegrated condition 

 of the hillsides in the Klondike district would greatly facilitate the 

 formation of gravel, and the quantities produced are enormous. On 

 Trail and Lovett Hills alone, Mr. McConnell's assistants measured a 

 total volume of 100,598,990 cubic yards of White Channel and 

 Klondike gravels, the latter being the other high-level or older gravels 

 associated with the former. The breaking up of the quartz veins and 

 the liberation of the gold was facilitated by their freely jointed and 

 slightly faulted character. The quartz cobble-stones and gravel some- 

 times contain specks and small nuggets of gold, and at the base of the 

 White Channel deposits placer gold is ahvays met wdth, and generally 

 in commercial quantities. 



Large nuggets are not common in the distrrct. Most of the gold 

 iy, however, coarse and rough, but generally wuth the sharper angles 

 and projections Avorn off. Much of it is as large as grains of barley 

 and Indian com, the remainder being mostly of the shape and size 

 of somewhat flattened pellets of the smaller grades of shot. Only a 

 small proportion is as tine as sand. In the unmodified rock-debris of 

 the hillsides the newly-liberated gold is quite rough, and is some- 

 times ciystalline. Here fragments of quartz from very small veins or 

 threads are occasionally attached to crystals and rough nuggets of 

 gold, showing that these liave been derived, not from recognisable 

 veins, but from small and thin sheets or lenses of quartz scattered 

 through the country-rock. From all the foregoing evidence, the writer 

 believes that a great deal of the gold of the Klondike, perhaps the 

 major portion, has been derived from the thin, small, and incon- 

 spicuous lenses which follow the laminae of the schistose rocks and 

 sometimes cut across them. Grains and small nuggets of gold have 

 been found elsewhere in the matrix of Huronian rocks, unconnected 

 with any vein, stringer, or cavity, and it is quite probable that much 

 of the gold of the Klondike may have had a similar origin. 



Placers dub to Great Concentration. 



From the above short geological sketch, there appears to be no 

 doubt that the extremely rich placers of the Klondike district are 

 due to the concentration of the gold (during immense periods of time) 

 from the enormous volmne of only moderately auriferous rock which 

 undei-went decay and w'as removed by water, while the gold was 

 allowed to remain behind on account of the absence of glaciation, 

 which might have carried it away. Mr. J. B. Tyrrell has calculated 

 that a depth of about 5,000 ft. of rock, which once existed above the 

 present surface of the district, has been removed by decay and erosion. 

 He has also shown that a very small value per cubic yard in this 



