306 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



between French Gulch (tributary to Eldorado abreast of Claims 17 

 and 18) and Adams Creek (tributary to Bonanza at Claim 6 below 

 Discovery) to be convinced of the actuality of recent transforma- 

 tions. Most of the miners regard the high-level gravels of this 

 tract of French Hill, Gold Hill (opposite to Grand Forks Village), 

 Skookum Hill, and Adams Hill so rich in gold as to make the 

 claims fairly the rivals of the creek claims, as representing the an- 

 cient high-level flow of the Eldorado and Bonanza, but I am con- 

 vinced that this is not the case (although it is certain that both 

 streams mentioned did at one time flow at as high, and even consid- 

 erably higher, levels). The materials that so largely distinguish 

 these bench or hillside gravels (placers) are in greater part rounded 

 bowlders or cobbles of white quartz, with a marked deficiency of 

 the fragmented schists and slates which make pay dirt and bed rock 

 in the course of the streams below. 



Per contra, the creek claims of Eldorado and Bonanza contain, 

 as a rule, only an insignificant quantity of the rounded quartz bowl- 

 ders, while almost, everywhere where excavations have been made 

 the body and substance of the output are the flattened and discoid 

 parts of the mother-rock of most of the region quartzitic, micace- 

 ous, hornblendic, and chloritic schists, and with them a less quan- 

 tity of gneissic and dioritic rock. The high quartz-capped knob to 

 which reference has already been made as marking the water part- 

 ing of French, Nine Mile, and Adams Creeks, has large quartz 

 masses entering into its composition, whether as bosses, dikes, or 

 veins, and to them, or rather their wasted parts, must we look for 

 the source which has so generously supplied the materials of the 

 French-Adams Hills benches. There has been a bad break-up in 

 this quarter, and the materials resulting from it have been swept 

 into the confluence (delta) of the two streams which define the main 

 valleys. Furthermore, the descending arcuate contour lines which 

 are so well marked by terrace slopes on that face of French Hill 

 which is turned to the corner of Eldorado and French Gulch, show 

 plainly the receding course, in the direction of south, of French 

 Creek (Gulch). On the hill slopes south of the position which it 

 now occupies there is none of that deposit which lies to the north 

 of it; the riches of French Hill are delimited by French Gulch, 

 and even in the gulch itself there is nothing that can be compared 

 with what is found on the heights. Again, on the side of Eldorado 

 opposite to French and Gold Hills there is the same deficiency as 

 regards the characteristic bench deposits, and this also holds true 

 with the Bonanza opposite Skookum and Adams Hills. If these 

 high-level deposits were in fact the ancient waste of the Eldorado 

 and Bonanza, we should naturally expect to find at least " outliers " 



