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University of California Publications. 



[Geology 



and silt, but angular blocks and loose rubble characteristic of the 

 talus cones of torrential streams working at high grade. If these 

 facts be insufficient to prove a structural origin for Kings canon, 

 there yet remains some stratigraphic evidence. The rocks on both 

 sides of Kings Canon are of the same metamorphic series. Their 

 character is different on the two sides, however. On the west 

 altered sediments in the form of thinly fissile schists occur, while 

 on the east the meta-andesites are in great evidence. Were the 

 canon parallel to the strike of the rocks, a single explanation of 

 this fact would at once be suggested. Such is not the case, how- 

 ever, as the average strike approaches closely north-south. A 

 second point is found in the tongue-like small schist area at the 

 head of the canon. The northwest side of the tongue is about 

 coincident with the road, and the schist is found abutting against 

 the foot of the steep granite rise to the west. As has been shown, 

 the granite-schist contact is roughly a plane dipping gently east- 

 ward, and no sunken schist areas of any size are found. Hence 

 this tongue can be attributed only to a fault. Moreover, the line 

 of this contact when prolonged passes through the fault at the 

 head of the falls. This fault line appears to be the major one, 

 lying slightly to the west of the creek line in the upper canon 

 and crossing into the lowest part of the canon below the falls. 



Thus the three principal eastward flowing creeks in the Car- 

 son topographic area flow in fault canons. There is only one 

 other flowing the same way that here requires notice. This is the 

 first creek north of Ash Canon, flowing entirely over crystalline 

 rock. There exist a number of facts which tend to prove the 

 course of this stream a fault zone. In the lower course the stream 

 has built a large alluvial fan that separates two areas of schist. 

 Of these two small schist areas the southern reaches a high ele- 

 vation on the granodiorite, or better, the contact plane between 

 the schist and granodiorite is higher in the southern area. A 

 warping of this contact surface would be able to present the same 

 result, but such warping has not been noted on the large areas 

 where it could be detected if present. More than this, the ridge 

 just north of Ash Canon has been thrust relatively eastward be- 

 tween parallel east-west faults. Warping above will not account 

 for this. Above the alluvial fan the creek has two branches, 



