CAMPTONVILLE AND VICINITY. 



429 



- 



1 



Indian Hill lies more nearly northeast, and may very likely belong to some tributary stream, which 

 came in from that direction. Indeed, there is some slight evidence at Depot Hill of the junction 

 of two channels, there being a spur or ridge of bed-rock in the centre of the channel some twenty 

 feet higher than the lower bed-rock to the east and west, though there is said to be no difference 

 in the quality of the gold found in the two channels. The bank of gravel at present is one 

 hundred feet in height. .Upon the bed-rock the gravel is blue, and there is also a layer of 

 boulders a few feet in thickness, which are seldom too large to be handled by a single man 

 without the aid of powder. Many of these boulders are peculiar in appearance. Specimen 35 

 came from this locality. It appears to be serpentinous in character. I selected it on account 

 of its resemblance to boulders that 1 had previously seen on Grizzly Hill. The gold in the top 

 dirt at Depot Hill is said to have been very coarse and nuggetty, but in the gravel below it was 

 line and scaly, increasing in coarseness as the bed-rock is approached. The claim at the northern 

 end is held by Mr. John Huh 1 and one partner, who, neither owning water-rights nor being will- 



ing to pay the price charged by the water company, have adopted the plan of drifting in the 

 richer blue stratum and panning the gravel by hand. At my suggestion Mr. Eule washed one 

 pan of gravel, from which I was allowed to take a couple of small pieces of gold. Mr. Wads- 

 worth says of them, that they are "flat, with rounded and rubbed edges. One grain is much 

 lighter yellow in color [than the other], contains considerable of its quartz veinstone, and has been 

 rounded on one side." .None of the gravel between Camptonville and Depot Hill has any capping 

 of volcanic material. 



Indian Creek separates Depot Hill from Indian Hill. The latter occupies the lower extremity 

 of the narrow ridge between the creek and the river, near their junction. The gravel can be 

 reached by trail from Depot Hill or by wagon-road from points higher up on the ridge. The 

 Indian Hill deposit is anomalous in many particulars. I have already spoken of the line of junc- 

 tion between slate and granite, which can be distinctly seen where the gravel has been removed. 

 About midway of the length of the gravel now exposed there is a remarkable pitch in the granite 

 bed-rock, where there might once have existed a cascade or rapids. The pitch is not vertical, and 

 there are no reasons to suspect the presence of a fault in the rocks. The general grade of the rock 

 is unusually high, there being as much as seventy feet fall within a quarter of a, mile. These facts 

 are illustrated in the diagram (Plate P, Fig. 4). The general course of the Indian Hill gravel may 

 be taken as S. 60° W, (magnetic). Its width is from a, thousand to fifteen hundred i'eet. The 

 average thickness from bed-rock to surface cannot be given, partly on account of the great irregu- 

 larity of the surface of the upper stratum, which is a volcanic cement as much as a, hundred feet 

 thick in some places, and falling oil' to almost nothing at others. The gravel has been removed to 

 bed-rock on both sides of the lull, and one transverse excavation has been made near the upper 

 end of the hill, so that the opportunities for examining the gravel at several points are unusually 



A very striking feature of this deposit is the stratum of coarse boulders, from thirty-five to 

 forty-five feet in thickness, resting at the upper end of the hill, directly upon the lower stratum of 

 line white quartz gravel, which is about eighty feet thick. At the lower end of the hill a stratum 

 of pipe-clay, thirty feet thick where it is prolonged toward the west, but thinning out to nothing 

 at its eastern end, intervenes between the boulder stratum and the line gravel. (See diagram.) In 

 the boulder stratum there are also occasional streaks of line sand, one or two feet in thickness, and 

 ranging from twenty to forty feet in length. The banded appearance of the gravel caused by this 

 unusual arrangement of the strata is distinguishable from a great distance. Seen from Depot Hill, 



good. 



the boulder stratum looks like a thick deposit of bluish pipe-clay. There is no sign of a fault in 

 the gravel at the point where the clay streak disappears. The most natural explanation of the 

 'acts is, that after the deposit of the white gravel there came a period of quiet, favorable to the 



accumulation of fine mud or clay, which collected in the lower portions of the stream to a greater 

 thickness than in the higher portions. Still later there was a second period of the accumulation 

 of gravel, when the old channel received a large accession of material different in kind from that 

 formerly deposited. This view is supported by the statement, which was made to me by Mr. Bliss, 



