LATER TERTIARY (MIOCENE AND PLIOCENE). 837 



along the band in its northwesterly extension. A seam, or group of seams, said to be 15 feet 

 in thickness, is being worked on Cliff Creek, about 75 miles below Dawson, for the supply of 

 that place. 



A small area of dark sandstones, agglomerates, hardened clays, and shales was found on 

 Last Chance Creek, a tributary of Hunker Creek, lying at angles on the schists. The sandstones 

 contain small particles of carbonaceous matter, but no lignite was noticed. 



Tertiary beds were also found along the southern boundary of the district on Indian River. 

 The northern limit of this area follows Indian River VaUey from Quartz Creek to a point above 

 New Zealand Creek, and the band extends southward beyond the region examined. The beds 

 he in easy folds and consist mainly of soft light-grayish sandstone, dark coarse agglomeratic 

 sandstone, soft dark shales, and, at one point, of heavy beds of coarse conglomerate. Frag- 

 ments of fossil plants occur throughout the formation, but no determinable specimens were 

 found. 



Q 8. PEEL BIVEB. 



Camsell ^^*t explored Peel River, a western branch of the Mackenzie which 

 joins it at the head of the delta. He says: 



The upper canyon of the Peel River is cut in a series of tilted black slates, often dipping 

 upstream. The strata of which it is composed are alternately thick and thin bedded, containing 

 concretionary nodules vnth crystals and veinlets of pyrite and some bituminous matter dissem- 

 inated through the rocks. This formation extends for a distance of three-quarters of a mile 

 below the mouth of the Wind River, where it is replaced and overlain by Tertiary clays and sand- 

 stones. The contact is not so well shown on the Peel River as it is on the Wind, though the 

 unconformity between the two is plainly evident. These slates outcrop agaia 15 mUes below 

 in the lower canyon of the Peel River, so that they border the Tertiary rocks both to the east 

 and to the west. A small outcrop of bituminous limestone, overlain by the red clay and sand- 

 stone of the Tertiary, is exposed 1 mile below the canyon on the south bank of the river. 



When cut through by the Peel River, the Tertiary basin is 13 noiles in width. The rocks 

 of this basin consist of thick beds of soft sandstone, with some thin seams of lignite, overlain 

 by more sandstone containing pebbles, with clay and some very thick beds of lignite. The whole 

 series has been gently folded into a number of anticlines and synclines. One lignite bed near 

 the top of the series is 30 feet in thickness and fairly persistent, appearing in two exposures 

 4 mUes apart with a shallow syncline between. This bed rises in an anticline, the top of which 

 has been truncated by later erosion, and beyond it dips again and disappears beneath the bed 

 of the Bonnet Plume River. 



Q 9-10. MACKENZIE VALLEY AND BEAR BIVEB. 



The " Bear River Tertiary" which outcrops along the Mackenzie above and below 

 Fort Norman is described in some detail by McConnell/^*"* who quotes descrip- 

 tions of the flora by Sir William Dawson.^^® The original publications should be 

 consulted for details. McConnell states : 



After reviewing the evidence afforded by the collections of fossil leaves and fruits which 

 have been brought out by various explorers and examined by Heer and others, Sir WiUiam 

 Dawson arrives at the following conclusion: 



"The general conclusion indicated by the above facts is the strong resemblance of the 

 flora of the Mackenzie River beds with that of the Laramie of other parts of Canada and the 

 United States and also with the Tertiary of Greenland, Spitzbergen, Alaska, and the Hebrides. 

 They thus confirm the inferences as to this similarity and as to the Lower Eocene age of the 

 Upper Laramie stated by the author in 'The report on the forty-ninth parallel' in 1875, in 

 subsequent 'Reports of the Geological Survey,' and in previous volumes of these Transactions." 



