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214 



THE AUEIFEROUS GEAVELS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA 



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Up to 



$ 



ground about 7,000 feet in length and 500 in width. The gold is coarse, one 

 piece having been found weighing sixty-five ounces. 



The hydraulic mines which have been described in the preceding pages of 

 this section devoted to the region north of the Middle Yuba are partly in 

 Sierra and partly in Plumas County, the line between which now passes 

 across the central channel, previously spoken of, in a diagonal direction near 

 Alturas. The county line also divides the Slate Creek Basin mines in such 

 a way as to throw a portion of them into one county and the remainder into 

 another. Pilot Peak, previously referred to, seems to be on the boundary 

 between Plumas and Sierra. 



North of Pilot Peak there is a distance of about six miles, between that 

 point and the Middle Feather, through which the channels just described 

 must have extended, and where they have probably been traced by the miners 

 with more or less continuity. But there are no details in regard to this re- 

 gion in the possession of the writer. North of the Middle Feather is an ex- 

 tensive district, within Plumas County, which is drained by the numerous 

 branches of the North Fork of the same river. The region in question is 

 very rough, being intersected by numerous ranges whose highest points are 

 from 7,000 to 8,000 feet in elevation : their crests have a general northwest 

 and southeast trend, and there is no one which can properly be called the 



dominating range. 



As we go north of the Middle Feather we find the bed-rock more and 

 more covered by the volcanic formations, which beyond the North Fork oc- 

 cupy nearly the whole surface. From Pilot Peak north, through Quincy, 

 Elizabethtown, and Greenville, there is a belt of argillaceous and talcose 

 slates, very thinly laminated, and closely resembling the more slaty portion 

 of the auriferous belt farther south ; as, for instance, at and near Placerville. 

 It is on, or immediately in the neighborhood of, these slaty rocks that the 

 mines of Plumas County chiefly occur. The American Valley, in which Quincy 

 is situated, is entirely surrounded by rocks of this character. Both east and 

 west of the slates are large areas of granite, which forms the summit of 

 Spanish Peak nine miles west of Quincy. The canon of the North Fork of the 

 Feather is deeply cut through a great variety of mctamorphic rocks, which 

 also occupy most of the surface between the Middle and North Forks, to the 

 southwest of the Spanish Peak granitic mass. The very highest portion of 







