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CAMPTONVILLE AND VICINITY. 429 
Indian Hill lies more nearly northeast, and may very likely belong to some tributary stream, which 
came in from that direction. Indeed, there is some slight evidence at Depot Hill of the junction 
of two channels, there being a spur or ridge of bed-rock in the centre of the channel some twenty 
feet higher than the lower bed-rock to the east and west, though there is said to be no difference 
in the quality of the gold found in the two channels. The bank of gravel at present is.one 
hundred feet in height. Upon the bed-rock the gravel is blue, and there is also a layer of 
boulders a few feet in thickness, which are seldom too large to be handled by a single man 
without the aid of powder. Many of these boulders are peculiar in appearance. Specimen 35 
came from this locality. It appears to be serpentinous in character. I selected it on account 
of its resemblance to boulders that I had previously seen on Grizzly Hill. The gold in the top 
dirt at Depot Hill is said to have been very coarse and nuggetty, but in the gravel below it was 
fine and scaly, increasing in coarseness as the bed-rock is approached. The claim at the northern 
end is held by Mr. John Rule and one partner, who, neither owning water-rights nor being will- 
ing to pay the price charged by the water company, have adopted the plan of drifting in the 
richer blue stratum and panning the gravel by hand. At my suggestion Mr. Rule washed one 
pan of gravel, from which I was allowed to take a couple of small pieces of gold. Mr. Wads- 
worth says of them, that they are “flat, with rounded and rubbed edges. One grain is much 
lighter yellow in color [than the other], contains considerable of its quartz veinstone, and has been 
rounded on one side.” None of the gravel between Camptonville and Depot Hill has any capping 
of volcanic material. 
Indian Creek separates Depot Hill from Indian Hill. The latter occupies tlie lower extremity 
of the narrow ridge between the creek and the river, near their junction. The gravel can be 
reached by trail from Depot Hili or by wagon-road from points higher up on the ridge. The 
Indian Hill deposit is anomalous in many particulars. I have already spoken of the line of junc- 
tion between slate and granite, which can be distinctly seen where the gravel has been removed. 
About midway of the length of the gravel now exposed there is a remarkable pitch in the granite 
bed-rock, where there might once have existed a cascade or rapids. The pitch is not vertical, and 
there are no reasons to suspect the presence of a fault in the rocks. The general grade of the rock 
is unusually high, there being as much as seventy feet fall within a quarter of a mile. These facts 
are illustrated in the diagram (Plate P, Fig. 4). The general course of the Indian Hill gravel may 
be taken as 8. 60° W. (magnetic). Its width is from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet. The 
average thickness from bed-rock to surface cannot be given, partly on account of the great irregu- 
larity of the surface of the upper stratum, which is a volcanic cement as much as a hundred feet 
thick in some places, and falling off to almost nothing at others. The gravel has been removed to 
bed-rock on both sides of the hill, and one transverse excavation has been made near the upper 
end of the hill, so that the opportunities for examining the gravel at several points are unusually 
good. A very striking feature of this deposit is the stratum of coarse boulders, from thirty-five to 
forty-five feet in thickness, resting at the upper end of the hill, directly upon the lower stratum of 
fine white quartz gravel, which is about eighty feet thick. At the lower end of the hill a stratum 
of pipe-clay, thirty feet thick where it is prolonged toward the west, but thinning out to nothing 
at its eastern end, intervenes between the boulder stratum and the fine gravel. (See diagram.) In 
the boulder stratum there are also occasional streaks of fine sand, one or two feet in thickness, and 
ranging from twenty to forty feet in length. The banded appearance of the gravel caused by this 
unusual arrangement of the strata is distinguishable from a great distance. Seen from Depot Hill, 
the boulder stratum looks like a thick deposit of bluish pipe-clay. There is no sign of a fault in 
the gravel at the point where the clay streak disappears. The most natural explanation of the 
facts is, that after the deposit of the white gravel there came a period of quiet, favorable to the 
accumulation of fine mud or clay, which collected in the lower portions of the stream to a greater 
thickness than in the higher portions. _ Still later there was a second period of the accumulation 
of gravel, when the old channel received a large accession of material different in kind from that 
formerly deposited. This view is supported by the statement, which was made to me by Mr. Bliss, 
