

THE BRANDY CITY AND EUREKA' RIDGE. 



461 



of the bridge I made to be 2,225 feet. On the eastern spur, between the ravine and the river, lies 

 the Grizzly Hill gravel deposit. A high knob of bed-rock, lying southwest of the gravel, marks the 

 place of the former rim, and shows that the natural outlet of the old channel was towards Indian 

 Hill or Depot Hill, places Avhich have been described on former pages. The altitude of the top of 

 the Grizzly Hill bank I made to be 3,560 feet. On the western side of the hill the bed-rock was 

 covered with slides from the banks ; on the side towards the river there are high hydraulic banks 

 and probably ten acres or more of uncovered bed-rock. I did not examine the gravel in detail. 



Cherokee Ravine cuts off the Grizzly Hill gravel from any immediate connection with that of 

 Brandy City. The trail from Camptonville crosses the bed-rock of the lower end of the Brandy 

 City deposit at an altitude of 3,435 feet. From where the trail crosses the gravel the old channel 

 can be traced up stream along a winding course, first northwesterly, then northeasterly, and again 

 more to the east, with an average width of five or six hundred feet, for something more than a 

 third of a mile, to the crossing of the Eureka wagon-road, near the lower part of the town of Brandy 

 City. I could not find any good map of this mining district, nor much that was serviceable in the 

 way of maps of individual mining properties. The town of Brandy City is built a little off from 

 and above the gravel channel, on the bed-rock which lies between the lower mines and those of 

 Windy ville. The altitude of the hotel I made to be 3,650 feet. 



In the lower mines there has been a great deal of gravel removed, and there is still a large 

 quantity left. The bed-rock seems not to have been entirely cleaned off, excepting over a small 

 part of the workings. The highest banks are as much as 150 feet in height, including in some 

 places forty or fifty feet of pipe-clay, and twenty or thirty feet of volcanic cement. The original 

 surface of the country was quite irregular and much cut up by small ravines. This makes it im- 

 possible to tell what the average height of bank has been. A fault in the bed-rock is an interest- 

 ing feature of these mines. The diagram (Plate S, Fig. 7) is from a sketch taken on the spot. 

 My first impression on approaching the place was that there had been a cascade or Ml in the old 

 channel, amounting to sixty or eighty feet. The bed-rock does not exhibit any marked differences 

 of external appearance on the two sides of the fault, but the plane of contact can be easily followed 

 by aid of the slickensides. The rock in place is quite dark in color ; it lias become much lighter 

 since removal, and probably cannot be kept for any great length of time. The line of the fault 

 can also be distinctly seen in a tunnel, which is intended to serve as an outlet for the claims above 

 the fault. My sketch was taken in a narrow cut, a few feet only in width. The superficial cover- 

 ing of gravel prevented me from tracing the fault any farther in the direction of its strike The 





hanging wall of the fault, as I was told by a miner at work in the tunnel above-mentioned, used 

 to project twenty or thirty feet beyond its present position. The gravel enclosed between the two 

 bed-rock walls looked exactly like that on the outside, and showed no appearance of having been 



disturbed. This position of the gravel is peculiar, and at first sight seems hard to explain, if it be 

 supposed that the fault was formed subsequently to the deposition of the gravel. I feel confident, 

 however, that the formation of the fault is the more recent of the two events. One ground for 



the fault 



this confidence is that the evidence goes to show that the bed-rock falls off again above 



in such a way as to leave a depression in the bed of the channel, — a depression that it would be 



equally difficult to account for, if the present high rock marks only the site of a former waterfall. 



The bed-rock of the Brandy City mines and of those at Windy ville is generally a slate of some 

 kind, with frequent alternations of color and of texture. Some of the rock is very easily eleav- 

 able, while some is more compact and crystalline. It is often nearly black or dark-blue in color, 

 though sometimes lighter and sandy. It is worthy of remark that such frequent changes of color 

 are seldom seen away from the gravel banks, and it is probable that they are due in part to 

 the action of the waters which percolate the gravel, and that they may not be permanent in 

 depth. 



At Windyvillo my observations were confined principally to the mine of Arnott & Co. The 

 altitude of the average bed-rock, of which about one acre is exposed to view, I made to be 3,5 10 

 feet. The strike of the slates is to the northwest ; the dip is to the northeast, at an angle between 



