AURIFEROUS GRAVEL. 291 



Where Rapid Creek bursts through the foothills and flows out on the 

 plains are very extensive gravel beds of this character, evidently deposited 

 by the stream at different periods as they cover the tops of hills at three 

 distinct elevations, respectively, at about 50 feet, 100 feet, and 300 to 350 

 feet above the present bed of the creek. The lowest of these deposits occu- 

 pies benches and flat-topped hills formed of the soft red sandstone of the 

 Red Beds. The gravel was mostly composed of limestone and sandstone 

 bowlders, mingled with quartz, slate, and ferruginous quartzite. The next, 

 also resting on the Red Beds, was of similar character ; not more than 50 

 per cent, of the gravel was derived from the metamorphic rocks. Both of 

 these deposits were on the side hills of the valley, in places forming banks 

 or terraces 20 to 30 feet in height, and should properly be classed as high 

 bars. The gravel from off bed-rock, obtained by drifting into the face of 

 these bars a distance of 4 or 5 feet, gave one to two colors of gold to the 

 pan. The highest gravel deposits were in places 30 to 40 feet in thickness, 

 capping the tops of the hills of Carboniferous and Triassic limestones, often 

 at a considerable distance from the present valley of the stream ; the lower 

 layers contained water-worn bowlders, 1 to 2 feet in diameter, of quartz, 

 slate, quartzite, granite, and trachyte, both feldspathic and hornblendic, but 

 scarcely a trace of limestone or sandstone rocks are found in these more 

 elevated deposits. Wherever tested the gravel from off bed-rock gave small 

 quantities of gold on panning. 



On Spring Creek, below the limestone canon, prospecting was out of 

 the question for want of water, though it is probable that in the early spring 

 months this stream flows out into the plains. 



In the dry side ravines of Whiskey Creek, among the Red Beds, gold 

 was discovered by a party of miners entering the Hills. Prospecting up a 

 dry gulch, they obtained twenty-five colors of gold from the dirt shaken 

 from the roots of a small bush growing in a narrow crevice in the bare 

 sandstone bed-rock at the bottom of the ravine. This locality, known as 

 the " Rosebush diggings," derived its gold from the gradual washing down 

 into the ravines of the gravel deposits capping the hills by the action of 

 occasional heavy rains, when for a short time a stream of water would flow 

 through the gulch and sluice the gravel accumulated in it, the gold being 



