208 GEOLOGY OF THE EUREKA DISTRICT. 



Paleozoic Rocks in British America. In this connection attention should be 

 called to the remarkable sections across the Paleozoic rocks of British 

 America exposed along the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway where it 

 crosses the grandest parts of the mountains. A description of the geolog- 

 ical structure of the country, accompanied by maps and diagrams, will be 

 found in a paper of Mr. R. Gr. McConnell, published in the reports of the 

 Geological Survey of Canada. 1 The region described embraces a belt of 

 country about 70 miles in width, and for the most part lies just north of 

 the fiftieth parallel of north latitude. Within this belt several transverse 

 sections have been run across the Bow River Valley so as to include the 

 mountains on both the east and west sides. Sections constructed across 

 Mt. Stephen, Cathedral Mountain, and the Castle Mountain range present 

 an instructive sequence of strata for the Cambrian rocks, while those in the 

 vicinity of Cascade Mountain and along the Devil's Lake Valley offer 

 equally good exposures for tbe Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous. 

 The upper members of the Cambrian are exposed in both series of strata, 

 serving to connect the lower with the upper Paleozoic rocks. From the 

 standpoint of this work the chief value of the Canadian section consists in 

 its close agreement in many of its details with the sequence of strata found 

 at Eureka. According to Mr. McConnell 2 the thickness of the Paleozoic 

 rocks in the region explored by him measures 29,000 feet. This, it will be 

 seen, is not far out from the thickness given for the corresponding rocks at 

 Eureka, where the best estimates place the thickness at 30,000 feet. The 

 fossiliferous Cambrian limestone, together with the underlying quartzite, 

 may be correlated with the Prospect Mountain quartzite and limestone. 

 Beds carrying the Olenellus fauna have been identified in the Canadian 

 rocks, although there they occur far below the limestone, the under- 

 lying quartzite having a much greater thickness than is exposed at Eureka. 

 It is difficult to determine how great a thickness should be assigned to the 

 Pogonip, although it is evidently well represented. Limestones carrying 

 Halysites are in many ways similar to the Lone Mountain beds, and have a 



1 Report on the Geological Features of a portion of the Rocky Mountains. Accompanied by a 

 section measured near the fifty-first parallel. Geological Survey of Canada. Annual Report. New 

 series, vol. 2, 1886, pp. 24-30. 



- Op. cit., p. 15. 



