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THE GRAVEL: NEAR DUTCH FLAT. 151 
just on the 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 Caiion, 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 the district which lies to the north and west of the town of Dutch Flat we strike at 
once gravel of a different character. Almost the whole extent cf ground that has been worked 
over is now thickly covered with boulders varying from one or two up to five 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 Teaff’s Shaft (already referred to in another 
connection) I could see that the mouth of the shaft was quite near the line 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, which overlies the blue, the boulders and the smaller pebbles as well are almost exclu- 
sively of white or reddish quartz. Southward from Teaff’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 down. It was shown, too, that the gold in the blue 
gravel is, as a rule, coarser than that in the red, which is scaly, flat, and fine. According to Mr. 
Teaff, 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 the same distinction 
which was made between the two kinds of gravel at the Cedar Claim No. 2. At Teaff’s, however, 
I was told that charred as well as petrified wood was found in the 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 the 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-five 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- 
face. From the point where the channel was struck at the top of the forty-two feet rise, 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 
forty 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 the northeastern end of Gray’s Hill, on the ground belonging to the Buckeye Company, the 
boulders are also very large and numerous. As would be expected where big boulders are so 
common, clay is scarce. In Mr. Teaff’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 the gravel first makes its appearance on the left bank 
of Bear River, it is said to look like a deposit of rotten rock, but as we get nearer to the Little Bear 
River it takes on more the character of a blue cement similar to that in Gray’s Hill. 
