RECONNAISSANCE FROM CIRCLE TO FORT HAMLIN. 131 
Intrusives, mostly diabase, are found in the Beaver Creek region, particularly on the 
divide between Beaver and the head of Victoria Creek. Quartz veins not over a foot thick 
were noted in a few places on the contact between sedimentary rocks and granite. 
The only occurrence of schist noted was a few small pebbles of what appeared to be mica 
nd quartzite-schist, found in the bed of Preacher Creek, mixed with large quantities of 
quartz, quartzite, and slate pebbles. 
PROSPECTING. 
There were no prospectors in the region between Circle and Fort Hamlin in the summer of 
1905. Choppings on Preacher Creek showed that men had been there, but if in search of 
gold, they must have met with little success. Preacher Creek is so called because a mis- 
sionary at Fort Yukon showed gold obtained from a creek somewhere in that region about 
1894, and prospectors, supposing this to be the one on which it was found, called the creek 
by its present name. In 1895 a few men took out some gold from Preacher Creek. a 
Prospectors to the number of 100 or 200 visited Beaver and Victoria creeks in the sum- 
mer of 1904, coming overland from Fairbanks and by boat from Circle. It is reported 
thai gold was found in the stream gravels, but the colors were so few that no one was 
tempted to remain. 
Willow Creek, a stream about 15 miles long, which joins Beaver from the south 10 miles 
above the point where it passes from the mountains into the flats, was staked along its 
upper course in August, 1904. Inscriptions on a tree indicated that there had been a 
small stampede, probably from the Fairbanks country, which had proved unprofitable. 
Some one seemed to have spent the winter on the creek and left in the spring of 1905. 
Bench gravels were seen 10 to 50 feet above the creek. 
It seems to have been definitely determined that most of the gold placers in the Yukon- 
Tanana country occur where the bed rock is schist, that some of them occur where the 
bed rock is slate, and that all of them are in areas of more or less igneous intrusion. The 
gold probably occurs for the most part in small quartz stringers in these rocks. As there 
is no schist between Circle and Fort Hamlin, and as the region is not one of marked 
metamorphism, the conditions do not appear favorable for the occurrence of gold in quan- 
tities of economic importance. The unsuccessful prospecting seems to lend strength to 
this conclusion. 
a Spurr, op. tit., p. 119. 
