THE GRAVEL: NEAR DUTCH FLAT. 



151 



just on tho spot where the change must have taken place. It is true, I cannot see just why any 

 such change of channel should have produced just the effects observed at this point, and it is pos- 

 sible that some far better explanation may be found. If so I shall be glad to adopt it. 



South of Dutch Flat Canon, it has been observed, we meet with no big boulders excepting in 

 the cement at the Indiana Hill extremity of the gravel; but as soon as we cross to the Gray's Hill 

 Diggings and tho district which lies to the north and west of the town of Dutch Flat we strike at 

 once gravel of a different character. Almost tho whole extent of ground that has been worked 

 over is now thickly covered with boulders varying from one or two up to live or six feet in diame- 

 ter. Whether the gravel all the way up to the original surface was of the same nature or not I 

 cannot tell positively, but I think the boulders were smaller and not so frequent towards the top, 

 Mr. Ross Browne, for instance, speaks in his report of the soft gravel at Dutch Flat above the 

 "blue lead." 



There were not many places where good information could be gathered concerning the nature of 

 the Dutch Flat gravel below the present surface. At TeafiPs Shaft (already referred to in another 

 connection) I could see that the mouth of tho shaft was quite near the lino between red and blue 

 gravel. A few strokes of the pick sufficed to break through the weathered outside and bring the 

 unmistakable blue color to light. The gravel at this point was very coarse and many of the 

 boulders were as much as five or six feet in diameter. The largest ones were apt not to be per- 

 fectly rounded, though very sharp angles were rare. The blue color of this gravel is owing in part 

 to the colors of the big boulders themselves, many of them being of metamorphic slate with a 

 decidedly bluish tint, though there is also a good percentage of quartz boulders to be seen. In the 

 red gravel, winch overlies the blue, the boulders and the smaller pebbles as well are almost exclu- 

 sively of white or reddish quartz. Southward from Tcalf's Shaft big boulders begin to be rare. 

 The shaft itself is sunk in blue gravel for 128 feet before reaching bed-rock, and discloses signs of 

 gold pretty uniformly distributed all the way clown. It was shown, too, that the gold in the blue 

 gravel is, as a rule, coarser than that in the red, which is scaly, Hat, and fine. According to Mr. 

 TealF, some of the gold in the blue gravel looked like pin-heads, — resembling the gold which has 

 been found in Bear River. With respect to fineness of gold, this is about tho same distinction 

 Which was made between tho two kinds of gravel at the Cedar Claim No. 2. At TeaiPs, however, 

 I was told that charred as well as petrified wood was found in tho red gravel, which was not the 

 case at the Cedar No. 2. 



Another place where I had a chance to learn something about the character of tho gravel below 

 the present surface was at the Dutch Flat Tunnel. The information was obtained from Mr. Col- 



grove, and is, briefly, as follows. The tunnel was run for about 500 feet in a general southeasterly 

 direction without reaching gravel. It was then decided to rise, and gravel was struck on the north- 

 western rim at a distance of forty-two feet. Between this point and the present surface of the 

 gravel is about sixty-five or seventy-live feet of blue cement covered by about fifteen feet of red 

 gravel : above which there was still as much as eighty or ninety feet of gravel to the original sur- 

 lace. From the point where tho channel was struck at the top of the forty-two feet rise 1 , a hori- 

 zontal drift was run for 200 feet in " blue cement." At the extremity of the drift sinking was 

 commenced again. The first six feet was in the same kind of blue cement as in the 200 feet drift, 

 and then followed ninety feet of clean blue gravel to bed-rock. From this point a new drift of 



orty feet in length was run in blue gravel, at the end of which a sink of seven feet was necessary 

 to reach bed-rock. The last two feet were in a hard cement. 



At tho northeastern end of Gray's Hill, on the ground belonging to the Buckeye Company, the 



oulders are also very large and numerous. As would be expected where big boulders are so 

 common, clay is scarce. In Mr. Tealf's claim the thickest body of clay was only ten feet in thick- 

 ness, and that only over a small area. 



At the upper end of Elmore Hill, where tho gravel first makes its appearance on the left bank 

 o Lear River, it is said to look like a deposit of rotten rock, but as we get nearer to the Little Lear 



wer it takes on more the character of a blue cement similar to that in Gray's Hill. 









