March 16, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



435 



direction of Dr. David T. Day, chief of the 

 Division of Mineral Statistics of the U. S. 

 Geological Survey. The vsrork assigned was 

 the collection of black sands and crude gravels 

 from the placer mines of this section for the 

 experimental concentrating plant of the sur- 

 vey at the Portland exposition. While visit- 

 ing Waldo, Ore., the following occurrence of 

 human implements in the gravels of the Deep 

 Gravel Mining Company was met, and with 

 the permission of the Director of the Survey 

 is herewith communicated. 



Waldo is situated on the stage line from 

 Grants Pass on the Southern Pacific Railroad, 

 one hundred miles south of west to Crescent 

 City on the coast, and is forty miles from 

 Grants Pass. It is in Josephine County, a 

 few miles north of the California line. 



Waldo was the scene of the earliest dis- 

 covery in Oregon of stream placers in the 

 country back from the ocean. Sailors pene- 

 trated to it in 1853 and found rich pay-streaks 

 in the bed of a small stream which heads up 

 in the ancient gravels of what must once have 

 been a large river. The discovery received 

 the name of the Sailor Diggings and the 

 name Waldo came later. The ancient gravels 

 are now on top of a ridge and have remained 

 in relief while the former banks have been 

 removed by erosion. The course of the river 

 was to the north, since its bed-rock declines in 

 this direction. The bed-rock as exposed in 

 the placer mines is chiefly serpentine, but in 

 one place the rim-rock is fossiliferous sand- 

 stone, which has been studied and determined 

 by J. S. Diller. The boulders are chiefly 

 eruptive rocks of various sorts and are much 

 softened as a rule by decomposition. The 

 exact relations of the old drainage would re- 

 quire more investigation for their elucidation 

 than the writer could give in the brief time at 

 command, and it can only be stated that they 

 cover a rather wide area — east and west — 

 having been mined at intervals for half a 

 mile or more across the main course, but 

 whether this is from forking of the old main 

 channel or not was not determined. Some 

 shallower gravels are probably due to the 

 •washing down of the old high channel deposit 



over the slopes and on to the flats on either . 

 side of its crest. 



Pestles appear to occur in the gravels as a 

 not specially exceptional phenomenon. The 

 operators of the mines speak of their occa- 

 sional discovery as a matter which does not 

 excite surprise. The following instance, how- 

 ever, of two mortars and of one or two pestles 

 attracted the attention of Mr. W. J. Wimer, 

 the manager and part owner of the Deep 

 Gravel property, and although the objects 

 were brought to light in the hydraulicking 

 during the night shift, he carefully recorded 

 the details early the next morning. The fol- 

 lowing extract from a letter of Mr. Wimer, 

 written at my request, gives the facts. I par- 

 ticularly inquired about the possibility of the 

 bank's caving in so as to make implements 

 from the surface appear as if buried in the 

 deeper gravels, but this possibility seems to 

 be guarded against both by the auriferous 

 cement in the large mortar and by its actual 

 detection in the bank by the pipe man. The 

 mortars and pestles are now in the possession 

 of Col. T. Wain-Morgan Draper, a well-known 

 mining engineer, at whose summer home, a 

 few miles from Waldo, the implements now 

 are. 



The mortar is about twelve inches high by nine 

 inches across, and is made of the hardest granite. 

 Two of our night men piped it out in 1902, when 

 it was firmly embedded in a blue cement gravel 

 (the pay channel), fifty-eight feet from the sur- 

 face. They had to resort to picks to get it 

 out and the bed or hole out of which they pulled 

 it remained, showing its perfect mould. I went 

 to the mine in the morning and those two men 

 formally presented it to me. It was still packed 

 tightly to its very rim with blue cement gravel. 

 With a sharp pick I carefully picked the gravel 

 loose so that I could clean it. I was some time 

 doing so. I then washed the detritus and got 

 eight pretty large colors of gold. 



H. M. PfeflFerly and D. W. Yarbrough were the 

 finders. The place was in the S.W. l^ of N.W. 

 14; Sec. 21; T. 40 S.; R. 8 W.; W.M., Josephine 

 County, Oregon, on the property of the Deep 

 Gravel Mining Co. The other mortar is what 

 Colonel Draper terms a quartz mortar having a 

 saucer-like cavity on its top. The gold from the 

 ground where it was piped out was pronounced 

 by the Selby Smelting Company in San Francisco 



