295 



liydraulic nietbod, with most satisfactory results. At the time this mine 

 was visted (May, 1875), the entire width of the bed of the gulch, 200 to 

 300 feet, was being worked, the breast of variable height, 10 to 20 

 feet. Here was afforded an excellent opportunity to examine the char- 

 acter of the superficial deposits, which are exceedingly variable both in 

 the fineness of their components and their distribution in irregular lay- 

 ers. The coarse materials, pebbles and bowlders, are rounded by abra- 

 sion, coarser and finer iuterstratified, often inclosing " pockets" filled 

 with gravel, and all resting upon the so-called " bed-rock". The latter 

 consists of partially-indurated, tenacious, red clay of considerable though 

 variable depth, and which in turn rests upon the true bed rock, which 

 is here a coarse-textured, light or grayish, granitic rock, very like that 

 occurring in the opposite or southeastern flank of Great Baldy. This 

 rock is exposed at one or two places near the foot of the claim, and 

 where much weathered it was slightly iron-stained red. The indurated 

 red clay, which it is said is met with in nearly all the gulches on this 

 side of Baldy, may have resulted from the disintegration of this rock.* 



Very similar rock crops out in low ragged ridges or "rims" on the 

 west side of the Moreno opposite Grouse Gulch, above and below Eliza- 

 bethtown. The red clay is said to contain gold, but its exceeding tenac- 

 ity prevents the working of only the upper portion, in which rich " pay- 

 streaks" are encountered. The mining-season lasts about five months, 

 beginning in May. The supply of "free" water, which is collected in 

 private reservoirs during the winter and early s[)riDg, lasts four to six 

 weeks, when the supply is drawn from the big ditch, a canal deriving 

 its waters from springs at the source of Eed Kiver on the west side of 

 the. watershed, and, circumventing the head of the Moreno, is carried 

 high up on the flank of Great Baldy, terminating near the head of 

 Grouse Gulch. A single season's expense for water drawn from this 

 source in working this mine amounted to $5,000. The results of a sea- 

 son's operations at the " cleaning up" indicated an average of about 

 one dollar per cubic yard; it is claimed that the mine can be profitably 

 worked for one-tenth the yield above recorded per cubic yard. Other 

 placer-mines are being worked on this side of the mountain, though none 

 quite as extensively as the claim above noticed. 



Passing up the grassy hill-side which rapidly ascends from the More- 

 no, and which is gashed by the unsightly washes of sluices and acci- 

 dental breaks from the several supply-ditches which have been carried 

 round the mountain, we gain a wooded shoulder perhaps a thousand 

 feet above the town, and are fairly set out on the trail to the head of 

 Willow Creek and the Blackhorse Pass. The way traverses a steep 

 wooded declivity on the southwest flank of Baldy, part of the way along- 

 side the Moieno ditch, which terminates near here and gradually ascends 

 to the elevated flats in the vicinity of the head of Willow Gulch, uhich 

 were once populous with mining camps, as the numerous deserted log- 

 cabins on evey hand attest. The naountain-side is perforated with pros- 

 pect excavations, treacherous pit-falls to the unwary horseman, and 

 stripped of its once fine forests, either for the use of the mines or 

 destroyed by the fires. Placer-mining obliterates whatever attractive- 

 ness a locality may have originally possessed, and these once wild pic- 

 turesque raviues and high aspen-fringed mountain-glades are not ouly 



* It is strikingly analogous to sonio of tbe deposits resulting from the still (so to 

 speak) disintegration observed in the Brazilian mountains, where the process may be 

 examined in all its various stages, from the unchanged granitic and gneissose native 

 ledges up into the thoroughly-comminnted red paste, with its overspreading sheet of 

 drift at the surface. 



No. 4. 2 



