40 TOPOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT OF KLAMATH MOUNTAINS, [bull.196. 
No very high dips were observed and nothing which could be called vertical. 
None of the exposures appeared to be fossiliferous. On the seaward side of the 
road was noticed an indurated shale, destitute of fossils, in thin layers and much 
shattered. Next massive beds of fine-grained sandstone like those noticed above 
the Miocene at Pebble Beach, Crescent City. These dipped about 20° northward, 
as shown by very thin streaks of fine gravel. Otherwise there was little indica- 
tion of the bedding. This bed is the thickest and best exposed on the whole sec- 
tion, and so much of it had recently been cut away that it is almost certain that 
if there were fossils in it they would have been noticed. Apparently above this 
and northward from it were heavy beds of pebbles with a little fine gravel between 
them. These pebbles were waterworn and rarely exceeded 3 inches in longer 
diameter. Still farther south were seen in several places stream gravels contain- 
ing some heavy bowlders. On the whole, my conclusions from this rapid recon- 
naissance were that, excepting some projections of the metamorphic sandstone 
(No. 7) near Capetown, there was nothing along this section which might not be 
Upper Miocene or later, though a much more thorough study of the details is 
required before the relations and age of the sands and gravels can be fixed. 
Rio Dell and vicinity. — The series of bluffs which border the plain of Eel River 
from Scotia to the mouth of the Van Deusen were carefully examined. Opposite 
Rio Dell they consist of irregularly alternating layers of shale and sandstone 
completely conformable and doubtless the result of continuous sedimentation. 
They dip N. 30° E. at an average angle of 45°, but are more or less bent or curved 
in many places, while preserving a general parallelism. In some places the rock 
has become a tolerably hard sandstone, and these hard layers are usually replete 
with fossils, mostly bivalves. The shaly layers disintegrate deeply under the 
influence of the sun, and every year sees a sheet of this disintegrated material 
several inches thick carried down from the softer spots. At the extreme north 
end, near the Scotia footbridge, the beds are more argillaceous and soft. The 
bedding is here very indistinct, and in some places appears to be nearly vertical, 
as if the end of the bluffs had received the crushing due to a pressure of the beds 
from the north and east. On the west side of the river, at the so-called Blue 
Slide, the beds dip nearly N. magnetic about 45°. 
At Grizzly Bluff, opposite the end of the bluffs at the confluence of the Van 
Deusen, 2 miles below Blue Slide, the rock is a massive soft sandstone in beds 6 
to 10 feet thick; some beds contain gravel or pebbles and above the base is a heavy 
bed of stream gravel. The dip is N. 5 °-10°, gradually diminishing northward, the 
strata becoming more gravelly and barren upward. There were no unconformi- 
ties observed. To all appearances, after examination at several other points, the 
massive soft sandstones continue with increasing northerly dip up the valley to a 
point north by compass from the house of Mr. Henry Davis at Rio Dell, where 
they are conformably succeeded by the softer light-gray shaly sandstones. 
In a general way it looks as if the valley had been the scene of rather intense 
deposition of sand, clay, and gravel from the Upper Miocene to some period in 
the Pliocene without marked unconformity and with a continuous fauna which 
changed, if at all, chiefly by some species becoming more rare or disappearing 
entirely. These sediments were gradually tilted by pressure and more or less 
crumpled. But the forces exerted were not transmitted far in the line of pres- 
sure, but were remarkable by their effects on the periphery of the deposits, por- 
tions of which were elevated to the height of the highest existing hills. The 
uppermost sediments are, of course, younger than the lower ones, but I have seen 
nothing in the abundant fossil fauna or its distribution to alter my opinion first 
expressed after an examination of the fossils alone, that the characteristics of the 
fauna point to an Upper Miocene age and no distinctively Pliocene species of mol- 
lusks appear in it anywhere. A large part of the sands and gravels of the more 
