6 
MUSEUM BULLETIN NO. IS. 
GEOLOGICAL HISTORY. 
The country in which Gay Gulch and Skookum meteorites 
were found has been geologically surveyed by Mr. R. G. Mc- 
Connell, Deputy Minister of Mines, Canada, whose report 
thereon is to be found in the Annual Report of the Geological 
Survey of Canada, Vol. XIV, 1901, part B. In this report Mr. 
McConnell devotes considerable attention to the character and 
origin of the auriferous gravels for which the Klondike district 
is famous; these he classifies as low-level gravels, gravels of inter- 
mediate levels, and high-level gravels, the high-level gravels being 
the oldest. These high-level gravels are further subdivided into 
river gravels and “white channel” gravels, the latter being the 
older. The term “white channel” is a miners’ designation given 
to the gravels by reason of their appearance and distribution. 
The “white channel” gravels are ancient creek deposits varying 
from a few feet to 150 feet in depth. They consist of a “compact 
matrix of small, clear, little-worn and often sharply angular 
grains of quartz, pebbles, and rounded sub-angular and wedge- 
shaped quartz boulders often two or three feet in diameter. 
Flat and sub-angular pebbles of sericite schist, the principal 
rock of the district, are also present, but in much smaller numbers 
than the quartz constituents. The schist pebbles are usually 
decomposed and crumble rapidly when thawed out. The 
deposit is indistinctly stratified, but, except in rare instances, 
there has been no complete sorting of the various constituents 
into separate beds and the composition is very uniform through- 
out. The colour is characteristically white or light grey due to 
the preponderance of the quartz constituents and the leaching 
out of the greater part of the iron,” 
From the position of the Gay Gulch and Skookum meteor- 
ites at or close to bed-rock, it is natural to conclude that they 
must have been laid down in the positions in which they were 
discovered in the earliest stages of deposition of the “white- 
channel” gravels. These “white-channel” gravels, according 
to Mr. McConnell’s estimate, date back to Pliocene time at 
least. The probability is, therefore, that these two meteorites 
like the gravel deposits in which they were embedded date back 
