THE GRAVEL: PLACER AND EL DORADO COUNTIES. 



97 





At the Buck eye- Sucker Claim, on the southeast side of the hill in Spring Tunnel Ravine, one 

 third of a mile southeast of Mount Gregory, a, hydraulic pit has been opened, exposing a bank of 

 sixty to seventy feet in height, Of this, the first twenty or twenty-five feet above the bed-rock is 

 a mass of angular fragments of the bed-rock mixed with earth, and containing but little gold. 

 Over tins comes a stratum of quartz gravel, from twelve to fifteen feet thick. This gravel is well 

 washed, and contains many large quartz boulders. It resembles in general appearance the lower 

 gravel at Michigan Bluff, the boulders and pebbles which it contains being almost without ex- 

 ception quartz. 



At the Shoo Fly Claim, in Missouri Canon, the gravel is generally some four or five feet thick 

 on the soft bed-rock. It is of a dark-brownish color, and is made up of all sorts of slate and 

 metamorphic rocks, with some quartz, and is not much rounded by water. The gold is generally 

 coarse, heavy, and well-worn, and the rim is said to have paid very well. Over the gravel is gray 

 volcanic cement. 



At Kentucky Flat, two miles southeast of Mount Gregory, there is a bank exposed in the 

 hydraulic washings, from twenty- five to thirty feet in height, and which is entirely of gravel. 

 Nine tenths of the boulders in this gravel are quartz, like those at Michigan Bluff; some of them 

 are very large, weighing as much as twenty -five or thirty tons. The deep bed of quartz gravel paid 

 four dollars a day per hand, over all expenses, in coarse, heavy gold, which was smooth and well 

 washed; the largest piece found weighed $94. Similar gravel is said to show in the bank on 

 the opposite side of Otter Creek at a point perhaps half a mile distant, in a direction S. 35° — 40° E. 

 (magnetic) from Kentucky Flat. 



At West and Foster's Mine, about two miles above Auburn, a tunnel has been driven some 280 

 feet under an isolated gravel hill, in which a channel is said to run about in the same direction as 



the bed-rock, or southerly. The hill is about a hundred feet higher than the level of the tunnel. 

 The gravel is all of metamorphic material, with but very little quartz. All the boulders and peb- 

 bles in the gravel are well washed and quite smooth. The hill is probably capped, at least in part, 

 with volcanic cement. Above West and Foster's there are said to be scattered gravel hills all the 

 way to Colfax, although the bed-rock is generally at the surface. 



In Todd's Valley Ravine, near Peckham Hill, a shaft has been sunk between the rims of the Big 

 Channel, to the depth of 103 feet, without reaching the bed-rock. After sinking forty feet 

 through the volcanic material, a streak of gravel was passed through, three or four feet in thick- 

 ness, and which is said to have prospected well. At ninety feet the top of another gravel bed was 

 struck, which proved to be six feet thick. Below this was a stratum of exceedingly fine sediment- 

 ary matter, about seven feet thick, probably of volcanic origin, and below this, again, a stratum 



of boulders. 



At Roach Hill, near Independence Hill, there is a clay bed resting directly on the bed-rock, and 

 it is filled with impressions of leaves ; this bed is from three to four feet in thickness. Above it is 

 gravel from a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five feet thick, and over the gravel volcanic 

 cement. 



At Densmore's Claim, in Grouse Canon, about one and a half miles a little west of south from 

 Startown, there are generally but a few inches of gravel, in the channel ; this gravel is covered with 

 volcanic cement, of a brecciated character. 



At Wilcox's Claim, on the right bank of the North Fork of Long Canon, the bed-rock is entirely 

 granitic; beneath the gravel, however, it is soft and decomposed. The gravel is from fifteen to 

 twenty-five feet thick, and is overlain by a light-gray volcanic ash cement, which contains occa- 

 sional more or less rounded pebbles of metamorphic and other rocks. This cement forms quite a 

 thin stratum at the claim; but increases rapidly in thickness ingoing northwesterly into the ridge, 

 where it attains a development of 200 feet or more. The channel seems to have come through the 

 ridge in a direction of about S. G0° E. (magnetic), and is from 300 to 400 yards in width. The bould- 

 ers in the gravel are in general not very large, although some attain a great size. They consist almost 

 entirely of a very hard quartzose sandstono and of silicious slate, with some impure quartz, which 



