

QUINCY AND VICINITY. 



475 



readied from Quincy by a good trail, which, leaving the stage-road a short distance west of the 

 town, follows up Hungarian Ravine. The highest point of the trail near the reservoir has an 

 altitude of 4,280 feet. At this point bed-rock is known to exist within a few feet of the surface, 

 being covered only with the red surface-dirt. To the north of the trail, and about one hundred 

 feet lower, there has been considerable mining done on the divide between two ravines, which, 

 starting quite near together, lead down, the one to the west and the other to the east, towards 

 Spanish Creek. The material washed at this place looked like surface-dirt alone, without any 

 admixture of rolled gravel. The altitude of this deposit is such that it may possibly have had 

 some connection with Shores Hill and Badger Hill, but the character of the dirt is so much differ- 

 ent from that seen at the place last named, that I am inclined to the belief that no such connection 

 ever existed. On the southern side of the hill, Quigley Ravine, starting from near the reservoir, 

 follows, for a little more than a mile, a westerly course to its junction with Slate Creek, east of 

 Mr. Orr's house. The Flat at the head of the ravine is said to have been quite rich in gold ; and 

 the present bed of the ravine shows signs of having been worked to a depth of three or four feet. 

 The material in the bed of the ravine at its upper end is peculiar in its arrangement and its struc- 

 ture, there being at the bottom thin layers of clay, line gravel, and "brown sediment" carrying no 

 gold, which are covered with the clean gravel above. From Mr. Kelley's Arkansas claim I ob- 

 tained a few grains of gold recently panned from the gravel. Of these Mr. Wadsworth says : " They 

 are much worn. On three of the grains some of the pits are not filled, and on the fourth we find 

 these forms deep, numerous, and bright. They are part of the original impressions produced by 

 the intergrowth of the matrix and the gold. They came from veins, probably quartz." In addi- 

 tion to the shallow diggings there are at different points along the course of the ravine, particularly 



DO 



mulation of the gravel. 



on its left bank, beds of gravel sufficient in extent to justify the employment of the hydraulic 

 process of excavation. The general appearance is as if the ravine had once followed a deeper track 

 a few rods to the south and cast of its present position, from which it was deflected after the accu- 



I made the altitude of the bed-rock at the base of one of these banks to 

 be 4 003 feet. The bank is of a brick-red color and about seventy-five feet in height. The bed- 

 rock pitches rapidly toward the southwest, but the beds of gravel and clay are nearly horizontal. 

 The material of the bank for the first twenty feet from bed-rock is lava and slate, with scarcely 

 any quartz. The pebbles are small, and not much worn ; the lava pebbles have suffered much 

 from weathering. Above this lower stratum the bank is lighter in color, and consists mostly 

 of clay, sand, and fine gravel. The body of gravel near the outlet of Quigley Eavine is known 

 as the Five Points. The altitude of bed-rock at the upper end of the present excavation is 

 3 740 feet. The width of the gravel deposit here I estimated at 400 feet. The thickness is, 

 in places, as much as eighty feet. On the opposite bank of Slate Creek there is also a bed of 

 gravel upon which a little hydraulic mining has been done on the northwestern side, where the 

 tailings are discharged into Rock Creek. The altitude of the bed-rock at this opening I made to 

 be 3 698 feet about 500 feet below the old workings near the summit of the Quincy trail. The 

 bank exposed to view is sixty feet in height, and it contains pebbles of the so-called "greenstone 

 porphyry," a little quartz, and considerable gray, tufaceous lava, the last being found all the way 

 down to the bed-rock. None of the pebbles are very large, and what boulders there are, are not 

 much worn. There are a few streaks of sand and clay, but no cement in this gravel. The con- 

 centric structure of the disintegrating lava pebbles was quite noticeable. The bed-rock, which is 

 a, slate, with a northerly strike and a vertical dip, appears to rise on all sides excepting towards 

 Bock Creek and Meadow Valley. Badger Hill is distant about a mile and a half in a north- 

 westerly direction, and is about 200 feet higher in altitude. An intervening high ridge of bed- 

 rock also effectually shuts out any possibility of a connection between the two places. It seems 

 to me most probable that this gravel is of comparatively modern origin ; that it was accumulated 

 in Quigley Ravine when its outlet was dammed up by morainal matter, and then finally re-dis- 

 tributed by the action of the waters of this ravine alone, without any connection with other 



channels. 









