THE CHANNEL: AT YOU BET AND RED DOG. 



173 



In looking for an outlet to the west and southwest of Red Dog, we find ourselves restricted 

 to the lines of Arkansas Canon and Missouri Canon. To the south of the latter rises the high 

 ground of Pine Hill \ and between the two there is an elevated spur of slate which bars all pro- 

 gress. That the channel cannot have found an outlet by way of Missouri Canon itself is clear 

 from the rim of rock which is still to be seen between the canon and the Bed Dog gravel. There 

 is no room to change the direction of the channel from east to west, without requiring an almost 

 impossible bend in the stream ; and, further, the narrowness of the canon adds to the improbability 

 of the idea. The notion, however, of an outlet by way of Arkansas Canon into the present Green- 

 horn is favored by the slope of the bed-rock at Bed Dog, so far as it can be estimated, and would 

 be the most probable one of all were it not for the evidence of the pot-holes that the stream made 

 a curve to the east. It is true that I know of no additional evidence lower down the stream that 

 the valley or canon of Greenhorn was the natural outlet from Red Dog (unless possibly something 

 may be found at the " Buena Yista Slide," * of which I heard frequent mention, but which I 

 never had an opportunity to examine), and, according to all reports, this particular stream was 

 never remarkably rich in gold. This is, to be sure, only a very feeble piece of negative evidence, 

 and is not to be allowed much weight. 



Supposing the outlet to have been by Arkansas Canon amounts to about the same as saying that 

 the gravel at Red Dog and vicinity was deposited by essentially the same stream as the present 

 Greenhorn, though following a slightly different course. And, indeed, when we trace the gravel 

 mines from above Quaker Hill along the banks of the present Greenhorn by Hunt's Hill to Red 

 Dog, it seems almost impossible to resist the conclusion — similar to the one readied at Dutch Flat 

 and Little York with reference to Bear River — that there has been no essential change in the 

 directions of the water-courses since the gravel era, and that the confusion and difficulty of tracing 

 channels arise from the chokings up of the old beds and the overflows upon the surrounding oountry. 



There is a theory held by some of the miners in this region, and of which mention will be made 

 farther on, that there were formerly two large rivers analogous to the Sacramento and San Joaquin, 

 which united near Red Dog and found an outlet towards the sea somewhere in the neighborhood 

 of Grass Valley or Nevada City. In accordance with the theory, while we were at You Bet, work 

 was begun by some men from Dutch Flat on a tunnel in Rocky Ravine, — the first large ravine 

 emptying into Greenhorn from the north below the Nevada City road crossing. The tunnel as 

 commenced lies about in the middle of the northwest quarter of Section 25. The projectors were 

 so full of confidence that they had found the hidden outlet of the main stream formed by the 

 junction of the other two that they called the location "Eureka Gate." The altitude of the 

 point selected for the commencement of operations proves, however, to be 2,692 feet, — or seventy- 

 one feet above the bed-rock at Red Dog. The rock at the head of the ravine — or of one of its 

 branches — near McLeod's house is also slate, in which I could find no place low enough for any 

 channel to have come through. To the north and northwest of "Eureka Gate" there has been 

 considerable exploring and sinking of shafts in past years in the hope of striking some hidden 

 channel, but, so far as I could learn, with no favorable results. The crest of the main ridge below 

 Quaker Hill is made up, for a considerable depth, of volcanic material, but the spurs which make 

 down from the top of the ridge between the ravines to the Greenhorn Creek are mainly slate, 

 though there have been slides from time to time of volcanic material which hide in some places 

 the original bed-rock. 



18 expected to be found, or the low place in the slate through which the channel might have come. 

 Since leaving You Bet I have learned that the prosecution of the Eureka Gate project has been 

 topped for the present, — and from all that I could see, in my short forenoon's explorations, I am 

 well satisfied that the sooner the work was abandoned the better for the prospecters. From the 

 house of McLeod, Senior, I climbed up the ridge to a point a half or three quarters of a mile dis- 







And it is underneath some of this lava covering that the hoped-for c 



hannel 





* r v 



ri. 



i( 1> 



e -Buena Vista Slide" was said to be in the N. E. ] of Sec. 31, T. 1(5 N. ; R. 9 E,, which would 



ring it within two or three miles of Grass Valley, and as much as that from the line of Greenhorn. 



