mJAVEL OF THE PLACERS. 237 



and proved regularly poorer in gold as the distance below its source in- 

 creased. 



Excepting Castle Creek no stream in the Hills was prosjiected the past 

 season to anything like the extent that the gravel deposits on French Creek 

 were subjected to. The whole bottom of the valley for nearly six miles 

 was full of prospecting pits. Each new party of miners on arriving in the 

 Hills first visited Custer Gulch, as it was called, and expended their surplus 

 energy and enthusiasm in sinking a number of prospecting- holes before 

 proceeding elsewhere in search of gold. But the results obtained by these 

 miners were very poor, except in a few localities in dry sags and gulches 

 about the head of the creek and in a limited number of elevated bars 

 along the stream above the stockade. 



The gold obtained from the placer gravels on French Creek was in 

 small flattened scales and grains, quite uniform in size, mixed with very 

 little fine dust, and nearly free from magnetic-iron sand. It showed but 

 little action of water, and the garnet crystals associated with it were often 

 quite perfect and scarcely rounded by attrition. The greater j)ortion of the 

 gold seems to be derived from the quartz ledges in the schistose rocks, and 

 not from the intruded granite ; for in side gulches, where the rocks were 

 wholly composed of granite, I failed to detect an}' traces of gold. 



The gravel of the placers is a mixture of water-worn quartz mingled 

 with a less proportion of bowlders from all the rocks at jircsent found in 

 the region, including granite and fragments of the harder schists and slates. 



The pay gravel is composed of the heaviest pebbles, with some cla3'ey 

 sand and lai-ge quantities of red garnet crystals derived from the schists. 

 It is soft, rarely cemented to a conglomerate, and easily washed in a sluice. 

 The layers of the gravel are porous and not clayey enough to be impervious 

 to water, allowing it to pass freely through, and causing considerable incon- 

 venience in prospecting. 



The exploration and prospecting on French Creek, both by the geo- 

 logical party and the miners, showed, up to the time I left the gulch, a 

 general diffusion of fine gold in the gravel beds, but little concentrated in 

 the deposits, and found in small quantities throughout the whole breadth of 

 the valley. 



