440 OSCAR H. HERS HEY 



bear handling. The serpentine bowlders are hard, but pitted and 

 honey-combed. Even the hornblende schist, which is one of our 

 most resistant rocks, has an aged and incipiently decayed 

 appearance. 



The local material is mostly somewhat angular, but the foreign 

 material is better rounded. Some pebbles undoubtedly show 

 river action, but more convey impressions of the faceting char- 

 acteristic of glaciation. An otherwise angular hornblende schist 

 fragment a foot in length has been worn smooth and flat on one 

 side and there are the faintest traces of striation. 



The unique character of this deposit is generally recognized 

 by the people who refer to it as a "glacier wash." Prospectors 

 say that it contains a little fine gold uniformly distributed through 

 it, and not concentrated into a basal stratum as in an old river 

 channel. The bed-rock surface is somewhat uneven, but is decayed 

 an.d, besides, not well exposed. Following the deposit toward 

 the east the bed-rock surface on which it rests very quickly gets 

 to 50 feet above the ditch, and the serpentine-bearing debris 

 ranges to over 100 feet higher. This is quite unlike the habit of 

 an old channel remnant. 



There is a 12-inch serpentine bowlder and some rounded 

 cobbles, associated with red dirt, along the old Spooner ditch 

 above the mouth of the Little South Fork Creek. About one- 

 fourth of a mile farther up stream there is a 12 X 18-inch serpen- 

 tine bowlder in a draw on a very rocky and steep slope just 

 below the old Spooner flume and probably 200 feet above the 

 river. There are no other erratics and this has evidently slidden 

 from higher on the hill-side. 



From the mouth of the Little South Fork Creek to a little 

 point just below the Deep Bank mine, the new course of the river 

 approximately coincides with the old, and all the old channel 

 gravels and local alluvium have been swept from the canyon. 

 The canyon is very narrow and extremely rocky, there being at 

 places, particularly on the south side, perpendicular rock bluffs 

 75 to 100 feet high. Probably the new canyon has been cut down 

 from 50 to 75 feet below the floor of Channel C, but in addition 

 there have been considerable slices of rock taken off from the 



