GEOLOGY. 
2 62 
to the river, and necessarily winds along the steep sides of the canon for a long distance, forming 
a zigzag descent. This road, being cut into the steep sides of the mountain, is very narrow and 
hounded on one side hy the steep ascent, like a wall, and on the other by the precipitous descent 
to the river below. Both wheels of the stage being locked and placed in iron shoes, we slid 
rather than rolled along the road, until the bridge at the bottom of the valley was reached. 
The projecting edges of slate are visible in the sides of the canon, and are very distinct in the 
bed of the river and on the opposite side. 
The water of the river was low, and several groups of miners were seen along the dry parts of 
the bed mining for gold among the river-drift and sands. A party of Chinamen were thus 
engaged, and two of them were throwing out the water from a pit in a very ingenious manner. 
They stand on opposite sides of the excavation, and swing a bucket by means of four ropes. It 
is thrown into the water at the bottom of the pit, filled, raised, and emptied on the outside, with 
great rapidity and ease. The bucket is thus in constant motion, and an immense quantity of 
water is thrown out in a short time. 
A long and tedious ascent, on the opposite side of the stream, brought us to the level of the 
divide, which the road follows, over a gently undulating surface, to Yankee Jim’s. This mining 
town is pleasantly located, and is about three thousand feet above the level of the sea. The 
auriferous drift has been extensively worked, and its nature is well exposed in the sides of exca¬ 
vations north of the main street. It is here seen to rest upon the upturned edges of slate, and 
consists, in general, of coarse materials, much rounded and worn. Several layers consist of fine 
granitic sand, and they alternate with boulders imbedded in clay and masses of decomposed 
talcose slate. Much of the deposit is stained by oxide of iron. At one point the coarse materials 
were underlaid by a bed of sand three feet thick. Portions of the beds were colored black by 
infiltrated oxide of manganese, and at a little distance looked like beds of black sand or lignite. 
About six feet below the surface of the bank the trunk of a tree protruded, showing that the 
upper portions were of comparatively recent origin, being, probably, a wash from the hills. 
These banks are washed away, and the gold obtained, by the “ hydraulic method”—a new way 
of mining, which has originated in the gold region of California. 
YANKEE JIM’S TO MICHIGAN CITY. 
August 14.— Yankee Jim’s to Forest Hill .—A ride of a few miles from Yankee Jim’s brought 
us to Forest Hill, an interesting mining locality on the north bank of the Middle fork of the 
American River. The surface is covered with pine trees, and it slopes rapidly towards the deep 
canon of the stream, which flows full 2,500 feet below, the top of the hill being 2,800 feet above 
the water. There is an interesting placer mine at this place, owned principally by the Messrs. 
Deidesheimer, by whom I was hospitably entertained and conducted to all parts of their mine. 
The underlying rocks do not appear on the upper parts of the hill and slope, but near the 
entrance to the tunnel of the mine they crop out, and are exposed in the cuttings. They consist 
of light-colored talcose slates, partly decomposed or softened, trending north 5° to 10° east. The 
tunnel, or entrance to the mine, is cut through these slates for four hundred and twenty feet to 
the layer of drift containing the gold. The slate thus forms a rim or margin of a basin-shaped 
depression, in which the gold accumulated. At the end of the tunnel the workings diverge, in 
different directions, and follow the surface of the bed-rock. The auriferous portion of the earth 
is found resting upon the edges of the slates, and is excavated in all directions, loaded into cars, 
