A 
REVIEW AND GENERAL DISCUSSION. 493 
When the termination here of this series of heavy banks is considered in connection with the 
additional significant fact that the west branch of El Dorado Cajon is stated to have been rich in 
early days up to a point nearly opposite to the Ayers claim, but not above, it becomes eminently 
probable, I think, that the stream which accumulated these heavy banks, from which the greater 
portion of the gold originally found in El Dorado Cation seems to have been derived, issued some- 
where in this immediate vicinity from the ridge on the west, and here first entered the area now 
occupied by the modern cafion. There is little chance, I think, of its having come froin the east or 
northeast across the present cation instead of from the western side; because no correspondingly 
heavy banks of gravel have ever been found either in the spurs on the opposite side of this branch 
of the caiion, or anywhere along the eastern branch above the near vicinity of Deadwood. 
The southeasterly direction in which the Mountain Gate channel at Damascus is running, and 
the northwesterly direction from which the channel at the Dam claim appears to be coming, so far 
as it has yet been followed, together with the short rectilinear distance between the two localities, 
might lead one who should judge from the map alone to infer that the Dam claim was on the 
continuation of the Mountain Gate channel. But I do not think that such can be the fact. 
The relative heights of the two places indeed are such as might permit of it; though in that 
case, the distance being some two miles (and probably more than this, as the stream would run), 
the average grade for the whole distance would be considerably less than the grade of the Moun- 
tain Gate channel has proven to be for nearly three quarters of a mile from the mouth of the 
tunnel at Damascus. But the strongest argument against any connection between these two 
channels lies in the totally different character of the gravels which fill them. What is the real size 
of the c. -nnel at the Dam claim northwest of the “ party-tunnel” is not known, as its eastern 
rim has not been seen. But it is not probably so large as the Mountain Gate channel. 
In any case it is almost impossible to conceive how a channel like that at Damascus could be 
filled for a distance of at least three quarters of a mile with a gravel so purely quartz, and full of 
such enormous white boulders of it, and then within the next mile and a half have the character 
of its gravel so completely changed that quartz should become almost a rarity, more than nine 
tenths of the boulders being dark-colored metamorphic rocks. 
Nor do I think it probable, either, that the Dam claim has any connection with the “ black 
channels” at Damascus. This, indeed, is possible. But the peculiar “ gray cement” of Deadwood 
is plenty at the Dam claim, while I saw none of it at Damascus ; and furthermore I have an im- 
pression (although I cannot now find any note of it) that the grade of the black channels at 
Damascus descends the other way, that is, towards the northwest. 
But if the Mountain Gate channel of Damascus, though running now straight towards the 
Dam claim, does not go there, where then does it go? I answer that it seems to me the proba- 
bilities are strong that after holding on for a certain distance farther its present southeasterly 
course, it will be found to curve to the south and southwest, and continue along under the ridge 
between the heads of Shirt Tail and the western branch of El Dorado caiions, finally breaking out 
into the latter in the vicinity of Gas Hill, thus proving itself identical with the stream which 
furnished the gravel along the spurs from there to Michigan Bluff. 
One other item in addition to those already mentioned, which goes to strengthen the probability 
of this, is the fact that in all the heavy banks along these spurs, as well as at Michigan Blutf 
itself, the gravel is pretty highly quartziferous, though mingled to a greater or less extent with 
other matters ; and it is only in the tunnel claims along this part of the ridge that the gravel is 
generally dark in color and contains but little quartz. 
If this conclusion be correct with reference to the course of the Mountain Gate channel, we thus 
have, during a large portion at least of the gravel period, a stream of considerable size correspond- 
ing moderately well with the present El Dorado Cation. Indeed, it is not impossible that this an- 
cient stream may also have forked at a point not far from where the modern caiion does, an easterly 
branch coming in from the vicinity of Last Chance by way of the northern edge of the Devil's 
Basin and the western side of the ridge at Deadwood. And when we remember that at all three of 
