100 RECONNAISSANCE IN NORTHERN ALASKA IN 1901. 



during the summer of 1901. Other new creeks, reported to be producing, are Ver- 

 mont, Swift, and Nolan. The two best producers thus far are reported to be Emma 

 and Gold creeks. The gravels on Hammond Creek are reported to contain much 

 iron pyrites, which, in sluicing, rapidly rills up the x'iffles, and in some specimens 

 visibly exhibits embedded bodies and particles of free gold — a fact of no 

 small economic importance. a> it seems to point very strongly to deposits of gold- 

 bearing pyrites or ore probably present within the Hammond Creek Basin as the 

 source of the gold. During the summer of 1902 very promising prospects were 

 discovered also on North Fork of the Koyukuk about 35 miles above its mouth. 

 Here the belt containing gold-bearing gravels, locally considered, is said to have a 

 width of about 20 miles and to trend in a general east-west direction about parallel 

 with the mountains. The principal streams on the Fork are Mascot, Washington, 

 and Big Four creeks. The discovery was made on Washington Creek in August, 

 but the principal producer seems to be Mascot, a west-side tributary, which was 

 discovered in September (1902), and during the season of 1903 yielded nearly 

 §100,000 in gold. This gold is coarse. It contains several §100 nuggets, and 

 other large ones of less value. The gravels are shallow; they range from 

 a few inches to several feet in thickness, and contain a little black sand. Their 

 shallowness enables the ground to be worked at a profit of about 70 per cent of 

 the yield, which is much greater than that in most of the creeks of the Koyukuk 

 district. The gold is found mostly on bed rock and in the extreme basal part 

 of the overlying gravels, and where the bed rock is rotten or decayed the gold 

 frequently extends a foot or more into it. The bed rock is mica-schist. It contains 

 stringers of quartz and is occasionally cut by porphyry dikes. Gold prospects 

 have also been found west of the above, on tributaries of the Hokotena. 



The Tramway Bar diggings are bench placers, consisting apparently of deposits 

 of auriferous river gravels resting on a bench of bed-rock conglomerate and sand- 

 stone, at about 80 to 100 feet above the level of the river. The gravels are mostly 

 coarse, consisting largeh r of rolled cobbles and pebbles of quartz-schist and other 

 rocks composing the mountains to the north. Several attempts have been made to 

 work these deposits, but thus far with only moderate success. This is owing appar- 

 ently to the remoteness of the region, the difficulty of transportation, and more 

 especially to the lack of capital to utilize the water supply, which could readily be 

 drawn from the river above the placers or from lakelets said to occur on higher 

 ground lying westward. 



The Tramway conglomerate has not as yet been found to be a fossil placer, as 

 was formerly supposed, nor does it seem to bear any relations to the richer diggings 

 occuring in the region of metamorphic rocks much farther up the river. 



Prospects of gold are also reported to have been found on some of the tributaries 



