PEOSPECTING ON CASTLE CEEEK. 265 



on prospecting-, nearly a cent to the pan of fine gold. This deposit of gravel 

 was 4 to 5 feet in thickness, composed of quartz and slate pebbles, resting on 

 bed rock of mica-schists, elevated about 6 feet above the water of the creek, 

 and so favorably situated for working that the gravel could be sluiced with 

 very little expense or trouble. Several pits were sunk in the flats near the 

 channel of the stream, but failed to reach bed-rock, owing to springs of 

 water, which could not be kept down by bailing. Small gravel benches 

 were found on the sides of the canon below this bar, which gave four to 

 six colors of gold to the pan, but were of too limited area to be valuable. 



Above the canon on the main creek and its branches are small ele- 

 vated bars and quite extensive flats of gravel, which were scarcely pros- 

 pected at all by the miners who staked claims on this creek on the larger 

 placers below the bend. The gold from this portion of the stream is in 

 small, flat grains, resembling that of French Creek, and probably similarly 

 derived from the quartz veins in the schists. 



In July, while I was engaged with my assistants in testing the value 

 of the placers on Spring Creek a party of miners discovered gold in pay- 

 ing quantities on Castle Creek below the north bend, and quite a stampede 

 took place to the new diggings. When, three weeks afterward, I visited 

 the new discovery, I found nearly one hundred and fifty miners camped 

 along the valley prospecting the claims they had taken. Most of these 

 men were old Montana miners, and, working together in companies, had 

 done a surprising amount of work for so short a time. Nearly every claim 

 had been prospected enough to prove its value, and preparations were being 

 made to enable them to work with sluices on a large scale. In one place a 

 bed-rock drain had been dug nearly a quarter of a mile in length, from 3 to 

 9 feet deep, to drain a gravel flat where the pay dirt gave, by several tests 

 which we made, from 5 to 15 cents to the pan of coarse rusty gold. The 

 gravel was at least 80 per cent, water-worn clay-slate, in fragments of small 

 size, intermixed with quartz bowlders and pebbles from the ledges. The 

 pay dirt not only was found as a compact clayey gravel on bed-rock, but 

 also in several pits and drifts occurred in one or more thin layers of clayey 

 gravel 2 or 3 feet above it. The bed-rock was soft, shelly clay-slate, 

 easily dug several feet in depth with pick and shovel, and holding gold in 



