ae ee ae Ta Oe ae ee 
lai Sor pl ae er 
arrangement of superficial earthy material. 357 
cultivated for generations, in ignorance of their mineral riches. 
arge tracts of this character, hundreds of acres in extent, are 
found in the locality already so often cited, the foot-slopes in 
the Pilot. The annexed diagram, figure 23, of a placer lying 
on a swell of land between those represented in figures 8 and 
9, illustrates this point. The whole surface of this flat swell, 
Which is nearly half a mile in width, is covered with the 
quartz fragments of the old bed gravel of an enveloping placer, 
which has been entirely abraded, leaving its quartz and gold 
In the soil, with the exception of the fantastic bifurcated strip 
seen in the figure, which evidently was preserved from abra- 
sion by the furrow which the moving mass had plowed a little 
deeper along this line. The thickness of this strip increases 
rom a few inches at the top to more than ten feet below the 
singular golden cascades represented on the two arms. Hap- 
pening to be present while the last of this curious placer was 
worked out, I was able to catch and sketch its peculiar features. 
This small remnant of an extensive deposit preserves, as shown 
In the sections, at A—A for example, all the characteristics of 
such drifts,—a dense bed of coarse “gravel,” of angular quartz 
ragments, at bottom, carrying most of the gold, and a thinner 
and more scattered layer in the middle, with visible gold par- 
ticles, and the finer gold diffused through the whole ten feet 
of depth in sufficient richness to justify the excavation and 
washing of the entire mass. 
he diagram (ideal as to its lower portion, and contracted 
longitudinally , also exhibits the character and origin of the 
gold deposits in the creek bottoms of the region, which were 
extremely rich when first wrought, thirty-five to forty years ago, 
demi: ten dollars a day to the hand, with the rudest appa- 
Tatus 
is, that the fine and diffused and scale gold which escapes in 
these rough washings and sluicings, evidently undergoes a pro- 
