) 



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SUPPLEMENTARY INVESTIGATIONS IN THE GRAVEL REGION. 



between the lateral ravines leading down to Canon Creek. This last statement is in accord with 

 what I could see from my point of observation at Dead wood. At the latter place there was no 

 one at work, and I made only a short stop. The bed-rock, where it was exposed over an area of 

 three or four acres, was quite irregular. Its average altitude I determined to be about 5,700 feet. 

 The gravel banks were thirty or forty feet in height. I could not feel sure that the deposit was in 

 the path of any old channel ; in some respects, it had the appearance of a slide from some higher 

 point on the ridge. 



At Bunker Hill there has been no hydraulic mining done. The mouth of the tunnel is at the 

 head of Grizzly Canon, at an altitude of 5,900 feet, and near the base of an amphitheatre of vol- 

 canic rocks. The two principal peaks are known as Bunker Hill and Democrat Mountain, rising 

 respectively, as well as. I could estimate by the eye, 500 and 800 feet above the mouth of the 

 tunnel. The course of the tunnel, S. 15° E. (magnetic), is such as to carry it towards the sag 

 between these two high points. The tunnel is nearly two thousand feet in length, the last third 

 of the distance being in gravel, in which some drifting has been done, though the works are not 

 extensive away from the line of the tunnel. The bed-rock, as has been stated already, is a soft 

 slate. In the parts of the mine that I visited, there were no very large boulders. Occasionally 

 pieces of slate or of other metamorphic rock were seen, but as a whole the gravel was composed of 

 quartz. Like that at Hepsidam, it carries considerable clay. There was a little charred wood in 

 the clay, and I was told that impressions of leaves were sometimes seen. I saw nothing resem- 

 bling the rotten boulders of Hepsidam. The gold is coarse and in the form of nuggets, sometimes 

 flattened. 



From what I saw in this mine it seems clear that there is here a channel-like depression con- 

 taining gravel. As to the extent and the connections of the channel, there is nothing definite 

 known. There are no good maps of the region ; none that show the topographical features with 

 any pretensions to accuracy. It is possible that a connection once existed by way of Deadwood 

 and Morristown with Craig's Flat and Eureka; and it is also possible that a connection exists 

 through the ridge with the gravel found near Sebastopol. 



The precise position of Sebastopol I cannot give upon the map. Possibly the peak which I have 

 spoken of as Bunker Hill is the same, as the one which in other parts of Sierra County goes by the 

 name of Sebastopol Mountain. I expected to be able to visit the Sebastopol tunnels later in the 

 season in connection with ray work near Downieville, but was prevented by the lack of time and 

 by an unusually early fall of snow. The site was pointed out to me from Craycroft's Diggings (to 

 be described on a subsequent page), and I was told that a tunnel, some 2,000 feet in length, had 

 been driven in the direction of Deadwood, on a course a little to the west of north, and that 

 quartz gravel had been found. The gravel, however, though frequently rich, does not form a 

 continuous deposit, the " mountain cement" or tufa frequently resting immediately upon the 

 bed-rock. 



» 



D. The Brandy City and Eureka Bidge. 



The district here included lies between Canon Creek on the west and Goodyear Creek on the 

 east. The position of Eureka is given on the map (Plate E) ; Brandy City would lie a little below 

 the southern edge of that map. The distance between the two places is about ten miles. Seen 

 from points which command an extensive view of this ridge, its crest appears as a nearly uniform 

 line, with the regular southwesterly downward grade characteristic of the lava-capped ridges of this 

 portion of the Sierra Nevada. Towards the lower extremity of the ridge the volcanic capping 

 grows comparatively thin, and near Brandy City very little of the gravel has any capping at all. 

 At Eureka also the volcanic material has been eroded almost entirely at the point where the old 

 gravel channel crosses the ridge. 



Brandy City is approached most easily by the trail from Camptonville. The trail from Scales's 

 Diggings has the reputation of being one of the steepest in the State. The former trail crosses the 

 North Yuba at Cherokee Bridge, and then follows up Cherokee Ravine. The altitude of the floor 



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