GRAVEL AND VOLCANIC FORMATIONS: ABOVE SMARTSVILLE. 195 
curring at intervals of from one to two miles along the divide between Deer 
Creek and the South Yuba. Those between Owl and Rush creeks, about a 
mile south of the Yuba, are about equally distant from the western terminus 
of the Nevada City channel, that at Montezuma Hill, and the great line of 
deposits which occupies so much of the area between the South and Middle 
- Yuba and seems to terminate at French Corral. Before describing these last- 
mentioned gravels, which are the most interesting and important of any in 
the State, the isolated patches mentioned as occurring just north of Deer 
Creek will be noticed. The question of their probable connection with the 
other deposits mentioned as occurring higher up may be perhaps discussed 
farther on in this volume. 
Tracing up the gravel from Smartsville towards the summit of the Sierra, 
the valley of Deer Creek is crossed. This stream has in the lower part of 
its course a very rapid fall; in the last mile before it joins the Yuba its 
descent is as much as 300 feet. On the north side of Deer Creek, a little 
northeast of Fiene’s, which is about a mile north of Mooney’s Flat, there is an 
isolated patch of gravel, at an altitude of about 1,200 feet. This deposit is 
thin, and of its productiveness nothing is known. Of this Mr. Pettee says: 
“There were no other high points to the west to interfere with the course 
of this channel, and it is impossible to say in just what direction it went. It 
may very likely have been a part of the original Mooney Flat and Smarts- 
ville channel, or one of its tributaries.” 
On the summit of Pearl’s Hill, about a mile northwest of the Anthony 
House, nearly on the line connecting the last-mentioned deposit with those of 
Smartsville, there is a bed of gravel, at an altitude of 1,549 feet, capped with 
a mass of lava about a hundred feet in thickness. The bed-rock in this region 
is slate. At Stark’s Tunnel, on Stark’s Hill, a little northeast of Pearl's, there 
is a tunnel, run in a white clayey material, not seeming to be connected 
with any old gravel channel, but rather the result of the decomposition of 
the bed-rock. 
Beckman Hill, about a mile north of Deer Creek, has an elevation of 1,950 
feet. This is capped with volcanic material, which lies chiefly or entirely on 
the western slope of the elevation; but which has, in many places, rolled ox slid 
down into the ravines and gulches, so that the line of demarcation between 
lava and bed-rock could only with difficulty be made out. The body of 
lava extends in a northeasterly direction for a distance of somewhat less than 
amile. The material capping the hill is made up of rolled fragments of lava, 
