246 GEOLOGY OF THE BLACK HILLS. 



cents to the pan, and several pieces of about the value of a dollar have been found by 

 the soldiers. I am engaged in prospecting the value and extent of the region. 



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WALTEE P. JENFEY, E. M., 



Geologist Exploration Black Hills. 



In order to test the richness of the gold deposits in the bed of the 

 creek, it was necessary to turn the water out of its present channel. With 

 the assistance of the soldiers a dam was built across the stream above the 

 point of discovery and the water of the creek conveyed by a ditch 1,000 

 feet in length across a bend and returned to the channel below the place 

 we wished to test, leaving comparatively free from water about 400 yards 

 of the former bed of the stream. Before reporting definitely on the rich- 

 ness of the new discovery I wished to test on a practical scale the gravel 

 from the different bars, and for this purpose constructed from rough boards, 

 whip-sawed from the native pine, a small box sluice 10 to 12 inches in 

 width, formed of two boxes 14 feet in length. This work had consumed 

 more than a week. In the mean time the soldiers who were not employed 

 in assisting me had been hard at work in the bed of the creek above the 

 riffle washing the clay-gravel in pans and rockers with quite remunerative 

 results. Several ragged and irregular pieces of gold with oxide of iron 

 adhering in the cavities had been found, weighing from § pennyweight to 

 1£ pennyweight and worth from 75 cents to a dollar and a half. From 5 to 

 15 cents to the pan was usually obtained from the pay streak, and the sol- 

 diers sometimes washed out nearly a dollar's worth of gold in three or four 

 hours' work with a pan. From twenty buckets of dirt taken from the bed 

 of the stream and washed in a rocker 2 pennyweights of gold, or nearly $2, 

 was cleaned up, while the pay gravel in places yielded as high as 75 cents 

 from five buckets of the top gravel — equal to $11.25 per cubic yard. 



Working as they did, often waist-deep in the water of the creek, under 

 many disadvantages from want of skill and tools, letting their tailings fall 

 back into the holes from which they dug the pay dirt, and, from the pasty 

 and clayey character of the gravel, obtaining but a portion of the gold 

 which it contained, the above results are quite remarkable. For, despite all 

 drawbacks, from an area about twice the size of the floor of a wall-tent (8 

 by 18 feet), not less than one and a half ounces of gold were obtained. 



