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SUPPLEMENTARY INVESTIGATIONS IN THE GRAVEL REGION. 



southern slope of the ravine there is some evidence in the lay of the bed-rock that a narrow chan- 

 nel, thirty or forty feet wide, used to run at an altitude of from ten to sixty feet above the present 

 bed of the stream. The gravel in this old channel is but slightly worn, and only a few of the 

 many large boulders, which, as a rule, are metamorphic rock, are well rounded. To the north of 

 the gravel in the ravine there is a large quartz ledge. Large, heavy nuggets of gold have been 

 found at Elizabethtown, and the bed-rock, in spots, is said to have been wonderfully rich. Taken 

 as a whole, this gravel deposit must be looked upon as of comparatively recent origin, and not as 



belonging to any of the old channels. 



A mile and a half to the north of Elizabethtown, on the spur between Little Blaekhawk Creek 

 and Jackass Gulch, there is a peculiar deposit of gravel known as the Dead wood Channel. It lias 

 not been worked at all by the hydraulic process. In early days a large number of prospecting 

 shafts were sunk on or near the course of this channel, but no one of them appears to have been 

 sunk to a profit. More recently, tunnels have been driven as a preliminary to drifting. The new 

 tunnel on Little Blaekhawk Creek has an altitude, at its mouth, of 3,500 feet. There are three 

 unusual and. interesting features of this deposit which are deserving of mention. The first of 

 these relates to the grade of the bed-rock. I had no opportunity to verify the statements made to 

 me, and I give them on the authority of Mr. J. M. Keller, one of the owners of the Dead wood 

 property. The gravel, which appears on both sides of Jackass Gulch, the bed of which has been 

 eroded entirely through the gravel and into the bed-rock, sweeps around in a long curve, and can 

 be traced, with a falling grade, up the western bank of Little Blaekhawk Creek ; that is to say, in 

 a direction contrary to that of the present drainage. Here, then, is a case in which the drainage 

 of the country has been reversed, unless some local disturbance, not affecting the general drainage, 

 has deranged the position of this gravel alone. The second point of interest is that the bed of the 

 channel is much more irregular than is usual in such deposits. There are rapid changes of level, 

 suggestive of cascades, and changes in the cross-section which point to the existence of a higher 

 bench, distinct from and parallel with the deep trough. The width of the channel is about 130 



* 



feet. The bed-rock is a talcose slate, shiny, soft, and fragile. Small hand specimens, which will 

 not crumble to pieces, are not' easily obtainable. The third point relates to the character of the 

 gravel. There is here an incompatible mixture of large, well-worn, smooth quartz pebbles or boul- 

 ders, and sharply angular blocks of slate bed-rock. These two varieties cannot owe their shapes to 

 the same agencies. The most obvious explanation of the phenomena is that the Deadwood chan- 

 nel is of secondary origin, resulting from the breaking up of some previously existing gravel 

 deposit. 



Spanish Eanch, on Spanish Creek, a short distance below its junction with Silver Creek, is 

 nearly due west from Quincy, and about six miles distant. The altitude of the express-office at 

 this place I made to be 3,585 feet, almost precisely 200 feet above the hotel at Quincy. Between 

 the two places, upon the ridge to the north of Spanish Creek, there are extensive deposits of gravel 

 upon three at least of the spurs which make down from the main ridge. Those are known as 

 Shores Hill, Badger Hill, and Gopher Hill, naming them in order from east to west. Eor much 

 detailed information in regard to these deposits, and to others farther west on the same ridge, I 

 am under obligations to Mr. N. Cad-wallader, of Spanish Ranch, the manager of the property of 

 the Plumas Mining and Water Company. Shores Hill I did not go to ; but I determined an 

 approximate altitude for its bed-rock by an observation on Hungarian Hill, on the opposite side of 

 the creek. With one exception, my determinations of the altitude of the bed-rock at these three 

 places agree very well with what Mr. Cadwallader told me of their known differences of altitude, 

 calculated from the grade of the ditch, and the amount of pressure at the different mines. My 

 measurements made the altitude of the Shores Hill bed-rock 3,988 feet ; that of the lowest bed- 

 rock exposed at Badger Hill (about twenty feet below the point to which Mr. Cadwallader's data 

 refer), 3,880 feet ; and that of the low bed-rock, near the face of the bank at Gopher Hill, 3,835 

 feet. The differences between these numbers ought to be, according to the miners' measurements, 

 105 and 135 feet respectively, instead of 108 and 45. The discrepancy can be easily explained by 







