A. J. R. Atkin — Gold on Lightning Creek, B.C. 105 



places the gold was so plentiful that the writer has picked up 

 15 ounces in a few minutes from the crevices in the broken bed-rock. 

 The reason for this striking richness was shown in the patch 

 occupying a pool at the foot of a fall in the old stream. 



All the gold was very water-worn and large, the smallest piece 

 being about 10 grains in weight, and was in the crevices of the rock, 

 together with hydrated oxide of iron, which was doubtless the pyrites 

 of that age. 



The benches known as Butcher Bench and Dunbar Flat were the 

 same stream of a still earlier date, and produced several of the 



largest pieces of gold found in the country. Some of the nuggets 

 weighed over 30 ounces, but contained a little quartz and were 

 rougher in appearance than those found in the deeper channels. It 

 was the erosion of this channel that enriched the Point Bench and 

 the deeper ground to the left. Most of the quartz probably got 

 washed out of and separated from the rest of the gold on its travel 

 down to the deeper levels. 



The most interesting of all the channels of this valley is the 

 oldest or Devil's Lake channel. Emptying as it did into the valley 

 of Slough Creek, it represents a period when the drainage was very 



